The following sermon was presented by the Reverend John W. Howe, rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia, on January 11, 1987. The title is Don't Be Discouraged, and the scripture references are Isaiah 42, verses 1-9, Acts 10, verses 34-38, and the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 3, verses 13 through 17. 

For me, the Epiphany season always seems terribly abrupt, and perhaps you shared a sense of that this morning with the change of liturgy. We've had four weeks during Advent in which we've been preparing for the celebration of the birth of Christ, and then we have the great festival of Christmas itself. The naming of the child is celebrated on January 1st and five days later we celebrate the coming of the wise men and then suddenly it's over.

We go just like that from Jesus the baby to Jesus the man being baptized in the Jordan River. If it happens to be the third year in our lectionary cycle we do have one brief glimpse of Jesus coming to the temple at age 12, but in the other two years we don't even see that. We go from infancy to adulthood with nothing in between.

Does that jar you? It does me. Of course, the reason is clear enough.

Scripture really isn't concerned with what we might look for in the way of ordinary biographical detail. Scripture's concern is twofold. Number one, who is this?

Who is this? Which is established in His supernatural birth. And number two, what did He come to do?

And that begins to unfold at the point of His anointing by the Holy Spirit after His baptism in the River Jordan. All the rest might be intriguing to us. We might love to know something about his childhood and his adolescence and his growing up, but that is not, strictly speaking, part of the gospel.

The gospel is, who is he? God come among us as a perfect human being. And what did he come to do?

What did he come to do? That's a fascinating question when you stop and think about it, because Jesus himself gave at least a dozen different answers to that question. Let me just give you a little bit of advance notice.

We're going to take that very question, what did he come to do, and make it the subject, the theme of a special series of sermons beginning two weeks from today. And I mention that to you for a couple of reasons. That is not aimed just at you.

Although I do hope that all of us will gain something from thinking about it together, but it's particularly aimed at those who are not yet convinced, not yet committed to the Lord Jesus. And it may be that among your friends, maybe even your own family, there would be some that you could particularly invite to come and share in that series of sermons. And please do join us in praying that God would use it to bring many to a new relationship with Himself.

That begins week after next. There's a brochure in the mail to you this week with more information about that. Let me just pause and ask.

Ask you to consider your own answer to the question, what did He come to do? If one of those friends that I've just been describing was to come up to you and ask you to tell him or to tell her in just a sentence, what would your answer be? Why did Jesus come?

I'm going to give you a moment. Think about that. What would your answer be?

Why did Jesus come? To save sinners. Somebody's answering over here.

How many would say to save sinners? What other answers? To save our souls.

A variation on the theme. To die for our sins. To give new life.

To reconcile us to God. To establish His kingdom. To show how much He loves us.

All of those are correct answers. It's going to be interesting to see what Jesus Himself said. We're going to use his own answers to those questions.

In this morning's readings, we have three different answers and none of you hit them. At least I didn't hear that coming back. Isaiah says he came to establish justice among all the nations.

How many had that as your answer? Matthew says he came to fulfill all righteousness. Anybody get that one?

You've got one more chance. Peter says in the book of Acts, He came to do good and to heal all those who were oppressed by the devil. Interesting.

All those things are part of it, and we could and we will dwell on those several answers, but I want to step back and just draw your attention to a couple of other things this morning. behind those various definitions of Jesus' mission and ministry, all three readings this morning make this point abundantly clear. That Jesus came to do those things not in His own strength, not out of the force of His commitment to God, not out of His highly disciplined moral life, Not even out of His supernatural origin as the Son of God.

Jesus came to fulfill His ministry, to fulfill His mission. He came to do these things out of the anointing, the empowering, the enabling of the Holy Spirit. All three passages make that clear.

Listen again to Isaiah. Behold my servant whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights, I have put my spirit upon him. And he will bring forth justice to the nations.

Listen to Matthew. And when Jesus was baptized, he went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descend as a dove and lighted upon him. Listen to Peter in the book of Acts.

You know the word that God sent to Israel, how he anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power to do good and heal those who were oppressed by the devil. Do you get it? I put it to you this way in a series last year, and I underscore it this morning, that Jesus was always the Son of God, not only in His adolescence, not only in His boyhood, not only as a baby, not only in His infancy, not only in His mother's womb, from before the foundation of the world, He was always the Son of God.

And yet, until He was anointed by the Holy Spirit, He didn't heal one sick person. He opened no blind eyes. He unstopped no deaf ears.

He straightened no crippled limbs. He cleansed no lepers. He raised no one from the dead.

He liberated not one single demonized person. He didn't even preach any sermons. until he was anointed by the Holy Spirit from on high.

Up until that point, he was just the best carpenter in Nazareth. And after his anointing, he never again went back to the carpenter's bench. So I was meditating on all that again this week.

I was struck by something in addition. that out of all these mighty things that Jesus did under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, an anointing which God says is for you and for me as well, Isaiah mentions this one, it leapt out at me. I have put my Spirit upon Him so that He will not fail or be discouraged.

Did you ever think of Jesus being discouraged? Jesus, the Son of God, very God of very God, begotten, not made of one substance with the Father, getting discouraged. And God Himself says, I've put My Spirit upon Him because apart from My Spirit, He would get discouraged, and He'd fail.

how many of you know that that that may be the most important part of the anointing of the Holy Spirit the enabling to keep on keeping on seems to me that's why so many New Year's resolutions are a sad kind of a joke see we can commit ourselves to almost anything for a little while but it's the long haul that makes the difference let me give you an example this is just one of many this one happens to be very close to my heart at this particular time you know it was just three years ago that we really took head on the subject of the sanctity of human life and the corollary of the tragedy of abortion throughout this country we began to come to grips with this and you know as a parish we rose up in nearly unanimous mobilization to try to do something about that. We wrote letters and we picketed and we marched. We held seminars.

We showed films. We brought in speakers. We gave money.

We opened our homes. Some became foster parents. Some adopted.

This parish became the national headquarters for NOEL, the National Organization of Episcopalians for Life. We reached out to the other churches in the Fairfax area, and we started a crisis pregnancy center. And three years later, a week and a half from now, we're hosting what I think is one of the finest convocations that has ever been put together on the subject.

We have some of the very top speakers in the world coming to address the subject of real alternatives to abortion today so that it's not just a matter of saying that's terrible, that's wrong, but it's a matter of giving us practical tools how to do something to make a difference. And as of this week, you know how many from this parish have signed up for that convocation? Exactly eight.

What happened? We changed our minds? doesn't matter maybe we were wrong no no what happened was we've encountered the opposition out there and we've encountered the apathy which is absolutely pervasive and we've discovered that we're not going to change that thing overnight and it's hard to keep on keeping on I say that's close to me because I found myself right in the middle of all this and I've been traveling around the country on behalf of Noel.

You know what I've found all over the place? You can get people committed to that. When they first encounter it, when they get excited about it, when they see the horror of it, they say, if only everybody could know that, we'd stop it immediately.

We're not going to stop it immediately. And that's the point. We start off with so much enthusiasm.

And then somehow it kind of peters out, doesn't it? This isn't a sermon about abortion. That's just an example.

I do commend to you the convocation and the march for life in a couple of weeks. I'd ask you to pray very carefully about whether God would have you be part of that. There's information and a sign up downstairs, but that's just an example.

How many other examples can you think of? How many of you are still on your diet? How many of you are still keeping your quiet time?

This is the year we're going to do it, right? Half hour of Bible study and prayer and meeting with God and the first morning you get up and you maybe get eight minutes and the second morning you look at the clock and roll over. We start off with such enthusiasm and so quickly it falls off.

The good news is that God knows that's what we're like. Isaiah says He knows our frame. He remembers that we're dust.

You need to know that too. See, if you think of yourself as really fine quality goods, you're probably in trouble. If you think of yourself as gold and silver and fine jewels, you go rushing ahead with your commitment and maybe it will last a day or two or a week or two or a month or two.

but you don't have it in you. Paul said, in me, that is, in my flesh dwells no good thing. But the gospel is that God takes dust and he fashions it into a vessel into which he pours his Holy Spirit.

and he doesn't ask us to be disciples out of our own strength he asks us simply to be vessels available for him to fill up with his spirit to continually refresh, renew and replenish our strength and to keep us from getting discouraged listen, if Jesus needed the Holy Spirit to keep him from getting discouraged how about you and me? in an oil lamp. So long as the oil is replenished, the flame burns brightly and warmly.

You know what happens when the oil runs out? The wick begins burning and quickly burns up. Anybody ever experience burnout?

out. When the oil runs out, the wick burns out. Give me oil in my lamp.

Keep me burning, burning, burning. God doesn't intend for the wick to burn. He intends for the oil to burn.

And the wick is just a vehicle. So in another passage, Isaiah says, those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. He doesn't intend us to win this thing in our own strength.

He intends us to wait upon the Lord. And then our strength will be renewed. And he says three things.

And it seems at first glance as if he's got them backward. Those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They'll mount up with wings like eagles.

They'll run and not grow weary. They'll walk and not faint. It would seem to us as if you walk first, then run, and then maybe you mount up.

But that's not the way it is. See, the truth of the matter is it's fairly easy to mount up. All you've got to do is spread your wings and catch the breeze of the Spirit.

It's easy to be exhilarated. It's harder to keep running the race that is set before you. That's why Paul said, I buffet my body and keep it under subjection.

Because it's harder to run the race than to mount up for a few moments. But hardest of all is to keep on walking. One foot in front of the other.

Just keep on keeping on. when the road is rough and rocky and twisted and you can't even see the end, keep on keeping on. That's when it gets really tiresome.

And that's when you need to wait upon the Lord. Because that's when you need your strength to be renewed. May this year be a time in which each one of us experiences the key to all that, the secret, to having our strength renewed as we rely not upon our enthusiasm, not upon our commitment, not upon our discipline, but upon the Lord.

Let's bow our heads together. Father in heaven thank you for this promise which seems so simple and yet we so easily run right past it and run out of steam this day we would stop dead in our tracks and cast ourselves upon you Come Holy Spirit and renew our strength for Jesus.