In our lesson from the Hebrew scriptures, Isaiah announces, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me.” Jesus recognized Isaiah’s experience as his own and accepted the call to “bring good news to the poor . . . to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,” as Luke puts it in his gospel (4:16-21).

Today, here and now, the spirit of the Lord is upon me, and you, and each of us. The Lord has anointed us to take up that mantle that Jesus laid down for us at Golgotha, to join John the forerunner as “the voice of one crying in the wilderness.” Their examples show us that it is not always easy to wear the mantle of Christ, to follow the urging of the Spirit when we get that nudge to do or say something that stretches us beyond our comfort zone. It takes a lot of trust in God for us to have the courage even to think about rocking the boat of culture and custom.

Once we finally are able to take up the mantle that God has prepared especially for each of us, when we have accepted the call for which we have been anointed, we will likely find ourselves praying in the words of our collect for today: “Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.” We know there’s no way we can do the task alone—it is only with the presence of God upholding us, sustaining us, that we can take that first step and every step thereafter.

The anointing isn’t once and done. We are continually being anointed with God’s steadfast love and mercy, clothing us with “the garments of salvation,” covering us with “the robe of righteousness.”