Earlier this week, our ELCA Youth Gathering contingent arrived in Detroit to begin their week of faith and service with 30,000 of their closest Lutheran buddies! And as has become tradition for our group at this every three year event, they somehow managed to quickly find the Presiding Bishop of the ELCA and post a picture of all of them together on Facebook!

I immediately recognized everybody in the picture, including Bishop Eaton, even though I've never actually met her. But in the two years since Elizabeth Eaton became Presiding Bishop, I've seen her picture online and in print publications. I've watched videos of her where she addresses major issues confronting the church. And I have friends who have met her, and I've seen their selfies on Facebook.

So it was pretty easy to recognize her when I saw her in the picture with our kids.

But I wonder how people recognized Jesus in today's Gospel reading. The Gospel of Mark says that people saw Jesus and his disciples heading away to a deserted place, and "they recognized them." But how would you do that in the early first century?

There were no photos of Jesus that people could view in print or online. There were no videos people could see on the news. In fact, even if people had previously been nearby when Jesus had performed a miracle, most probably hadn't been close enough to get a good look at him. And they couldn't have taken a selfie to show their friends who he was.

Yet Mark says that, in spite of not knowing what Jesus looked like, people "recognized" him. In the abbreviated way that Mark tells the story, it might sound like people instantly recognized Jesus the moment they saw his face. But probably, what Mark means is that as Jesus arrived in a place and started to interact with people, people were able to "recognize" that this was, in fact, the Jesus about whom they had heard so much.

And even though they didn't necessarily know what Jesus looked like, they recognized Jesus by:

• how Jesus cared about them ... ("he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd"; this probably contrasted greatly from many of the famous people who came through who DIDN'T care at all about them, or only cared about them because they were sheep to be fleeced...!)

• what Jesus said to them ... ("he taught them", instead of ignoring them or treating them like they were too dumb to understand or appreciate what God was doing in their lives - this was the attitude of the Pharisees and many of the religious authorities of the time ...)

• how Jesus helped them with their real life, everyday needs ... (this is a really strange Gospel reading because you'll notice that we're missing 18 verses in between the beginning and the end - those 18 verses are the story of the feeding of the 5000, which will be the context and focus of the next several Sundays; but whether it was feeding them, or healing them or simply being their friend, Jesus showed that he didn't just care about things that "religious people" considered "spiritual", but that he cared about them as whole people - body and spirit ...)

I suspect that those were really the ways people "recognized" Jesus. But that raises another important question: How can people recognize Jesus in our world today? And how is Jesus recognized in our lives as Christians?

It's an important question, because there are sadly a lot of people out there who try to give the impression that Jesus should be recognized through pure doctrine, and moral codes and aloof behavior. But that was the way the Pharisees were recognized. It was NEVER how Jesus was recognized.

Instead, Jesus wants to be recognized in us and through us by the way we:

• show compassion for others - this is not just a nice thing to do; it's projecting the attitude that Jesus had for others - even people he hadn't met and who might have later on walked away and not cared much about what he said; and sometimes, compassion is shown through generosity of giving and serving even when we're too tired and like Jesus, don't even seem to have time to eat ...

• help others understand what God is doing in their lives - the most effective way to help people "recognize" that God is at work in the real world is to talk about how you've experienced God doing something meaningful in your life; it usually isn't as effective if you try to convince someone else that they're too stupid to recognize God around them; and that's the difference between how Jesus taught and how the scribes and Pharisees of the day often taught...