When you look around at the world out there where do you see Jesus these days?  And where don’t you? I think it’s important to know so that we can worship and honor and obey and serve the right master. I think it’s important to know so we can sing praises to the right god among all the possibilities we have here in our midst these days. “At the name of Jesus every knee should bend and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” Whose names are really “Jesus”…and whose names really aren’t? We ought to know because it’s possible to be mistaken.

 

Let’s begin with several assumptions. The first is we can see Jesus. We can see him. We can see who he is, what he is, and where he is…and…where he isn’t. Just as much as we know that when we killed Jesus, or tried to, which we did in the 1^st century, he didn’t stay dead, but rose, hung around for a while, then ascended into heaven, we also now know he has come back from heaven and is in our midst and is available for our worship, our friendship, and our use. He’s here somewhere; else this religion that we practice has no purpose or usefulness. He’s here, not everywhere – the Kingdom of God hasn’t fully arrived yet on this Earth and in our lives – but Jesus is here. The trick is to see him and proclaim his presence whenever we see him.

 

Which is the primary job the church has, I think, and we have -- the job of proclamation, prophetic proclamation. It’s to say, not presumptuously or arrogantly, here and there and there Jesus is present and here and there and there Jesus is absent, it’s Satan you’re looking at, or, if neither Jesus nor Satan, then it’s just nothing you’re looking at – nothing – and it’s not worth your time, and if you are looking at it, you’re wasting your time and being a bad steward of your God-given resources. It’s the primary job the church has. It’s to go looking around and to name Jesus whenever it sees him, and to tell his name whenever we see him so that at that name, Jesus, the knees of the hearers of the name will bend and the tongues of the hearers of the name will confess that Jesus indeed is Lord and, conversely, the bearer of any other name isn’t Lord.

 

But how do you tell? There’s the rub, because it’s hard, and sometimes you have to dig beneath the surface to see what name is stamped indelibly on the innards and heart and soul and isn’t just a name that is superficially or temporarily applied. The real name of a person or an institution or activity or policy isn’t always easy to tell.

 

And how presumptuous it would seem to be for anyone to call anyone or anything else “Jesus” and other things “not Jesus,” or worse, “Satan”! How arrogant and self-righteous and ill advised! We wouldn’t want anyone else doing it to us. Them’s  fightin’ words!  How dare we presume to do it ourselves or even think we should! It’s religion messing with things that aren’t any of its business -- like business…and politics…or somebody else’s religious convictions. Lots of people, for example, think the church has no business thinking about what it might do or not do with the stock it owns in companies that do business with people or nations who purposely cause undue human suffering.  Not that the companies cause it, but that the people and nations they do business with do.  And I can’t tell you how many folks think the church should never comment on politics.

 

The fact is it’s hard to be righteous and well advised and politically correct and not seem arrogant and presumptuous and self-righteous (if not hypocritical) when it comes to the work of naming and proclaiming Jesus whenever we see him. It’s hard, for sure, and dangerous, I suppose, but it isn’t impossible. And it’s so badly needed. It isn’t impossible because we know from Scripture what Jesus looks like and what he doesn’t look like. All that we need to do is draw the picture clearly, communicate it clearly, keep drawing it and keep communicating it, and let the people who see our picture compare it themselves with whatever else fascinates them, and then make the judgment themselves. Is it Jesus they’re fascinated with…or something else?

 

What Jesus will look like is always going to be what is described here in the great hymn in the second chapter of Philippians. What Jesus will always look like is anyone or anything that, even though he or she or it has enough power to be god-like, chooses not to use the power but to dump it and do the opposite, become a servant (Paul says “slave”) in others’ behalf. What Jesus will always look like is anyone or anything that chooses to humble ones self or its self in order that others might live and live with dignity and thrive. What Jesus will always look like is anyone or anything that will be obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, in order that others might live.

 

There’s your standard of measure. What gets the name “Jesus” these days and what doesn’t? Who gets it and who doesn’t? Who and what gets some other, less spectacular name, because it’s the name that fits, and “Jesus” doesn’t? Who gets the name Satan, because it fits?

 

Well, I got news for you. You’re going to have to decide for yourselves. I’m not going to tell you or even make any suggestions, well, maybe some hints. I’ve survived in ministry a long time and am not about to start being stupid now, though I’m not above it, as you know. But I can suggest some categories that ought to be measured, or have this picture of Jesus I’m suggesting compared to them.

 

In the world of economics and government, how does socialism compare, not with what we do, but with Jesus and with who the Philippians hymn says Jesus is. Communism, I think, believed initially it could have a favorable comparison. We all thought otherwise, and now we know it didn’t and never could. Communism never demonstrated the name Jesus. But does capitalism or consumerism the way they get fleshed out these days? Is there any justification for the business is business and aggressive competition approaches nowadays in the 21^st century when mega corporations now control so much? How do they compare with Jesus and Satan? Which name should be applied? Or maybe it’s none at all. Then what relevance is religion anymore, and how many more generations do you think our faith institutions will last?

 

And how about sports? It’s always been based on the idea that competition is healthy, healthy competition. But now so much of it is based on winning at any cost. Boxing? One boxer killed another recently, and it happens every so often.  How long will we tolerate that? Can Jesus compare at all any more? Or the National Rifle Association? They’ve still got power for sure, and lots of it? But what justification can there be anymore for private citizens to own anything they want, when what they want, like repeating rifles, have gotten exponentially so much more dangerous than when the Bill of Rights was written, and the percentage of crazy people in the population has stayed about the same. Why do we have to still give them the same access to weapons of destruction that have changed so much? How does the NRA compare with the picture of Jesus? You decide.

 

Or in New Orleans a few years ago when poor people looted stores whose managers had fled in their cars to higher ground? Whom did we see there, Jesus or Satan? But is it really fair to judge when people are so poor and so desperate and without easy access to a safer place. How does Jesus compare? Just whose name is Jesus and whose isn’t? It gets messy. Or on Interstate 45 going north out of  Houston, at a convenience store where people had stopped for water and were being charged by the store owner $30.00 a case. Should it have been called legitimate entrepreneurship because there was a market that the hurricane created? Or, should it have been called demonic. You decide. What shall we name it?

 

And by all means the Church itself must be measured and by the very same standard that we would suggest the world out there and its people and its other institutions are to be measured, the standard is Jesus. Is what we in the church do or don’t do demonstrative of the one we proclaim to be our king, savior, and friend, King Jesus? Well, I suspect the results of the study will be about the same as the comparison study we would do with the world out there as subject. We’re just not any better. We’d like to be, but the sad news is we’re not. Once there was the hypocrisy of the Crusades and such awful things. Now there’s the threat of the church further tearing its own flesh and weakening itself further because its members can’t agree on how much sexual diversity God has created in humankind and how pervasive sin is, all while the world that needs the Gospel the church has to proclaim tears its own flesh and threatens to blow the world apart quite literally.

 

And so it goes, on and on. Where is Jesus in all of this? Who is Jesus in all of this? Who is willing to empty himself or herself or its self of all available power and opportunity and take the form of a servant in order that humankind can be saved and served? Where was Jesus in the debate over capital punishment this past week when a man was executed in Georgia because of “law” that the Supreme Court was properly followed but when, at the end of the day, there was no certain evidence that he was guilty? Or on the night before when a presidential candidate spoke compassionately and intelligently about young people in his state whose parents are immigrants without documentation receiving the same college tuition benefits as everybody else, but in the previous debate was applauded when he spoke of the capital punishment statistics in the state where he is governor, the state with the highest capital punishment numbers in the country? Where’s Jesus in that? And where and who isn’t he? The church should be saying..

 

Where has Jesus been in all of it? In the end I want to suggest he’s been there in all of it and still is. His name is written on the blue denim shirts and fire retardant suits of thousands of public servants and relief work volunteers who consistently and without suggesting it’s anything but their duty just do the job of saving people’s homes or rescuing people clinging to rooftops or wading in the slop of city streets to save people who, without a savior, would perish.  Jesus is there, and he ought to be proclaimed as being there. His face is the faces of the people in the blue denim shirts and the uniforms of fire fighters and relief workers of every sort.

 

Likewise, he was there in the person of the young to whom the President gave the Medal of Honor last week for having plunged into enemy gunfire in Afghanistan, making five trips to rescue friends or retrieve their bodies knowing, he says, he would likely be killed. The face of Jesus was in the face of that young man. And Jesus is here in this sanctuary this morning in the persons of all of you who have responded to the realities of severe human need this year. How many special offerings have we received this year? How much have we raised for fire and flood and earthquake relief. I know its tens of thousands of dollars and perhaps hundreds of thousands.

 

The fact of the matter is the name “Jesus,” if you think about, is still more present than it is absent, and maybe even a whole lot more present than ever before. And the name “Jesus,” when you think about it, is still a whole lot more present and legitimately applied, than the name “Satan” ever was or ever will be. It really is. We just have to say so ever so much more aggressively.

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Let us pray. Give us your grace, dear God, to see what you have done, the magnificent, spectacular thing you have done in giving us Jesus. Help us to see him, call out his name, and declare his presence with us and with all creation all the time.  In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.