Toward the end of last week's sermon, I quoted a line which shows how prayer affects our daily life. Here it is again. "In prayer, we receive what we need for our daily work. In our daily work, we discover what we need to pray for." I think I needed to come back to it, because I don't think I was as clear as I wanted to be.

We talked about wrestling as part of our prayer life, but I think I made it sound like we wrestled when we prayed. Maybe so, but is not so much when we are praying, but when we are seeing for what we need to pray. In other words, when we see what God expects of us, and when we see how far short we fall of that, we see what we need to pray for. This is the wrestling match. We struggle to be what we know we should be, and see how difficult it can be. Even if we control our outward behavior, we know what is going on in our heads. We see our sinfulness, even if no one else sees it. In other words, we see why we need a Savior. We are truly poor, miserable sinners. Not a happy thought, but reality all the same.

And so here we are in Lent, as we attend to things that we may become better Christians. It's what we pray in the proper preface, "...that with cleansed hearts we might be prepared joyfully to celebrate the paschal feast with sincerity and truth..."

It seems St. Paul has the same thing in mind, in our Epistle lesson. He talks about being imitators of God, about walking in love, about avoiding sexual immorality, impurity, covetousness and the whole laundry list.

Yesterday, Darlene Pasche as Parish Nurse and I were at a domestic abuse workshop in Brainerd. What does it mean to walk in love, as St. Paul encourages the Ephesians? That's the major problem with domestic abuse, whether we are talking about spousal or child abuse. The abuser is not walking in love. The abuser does not show respect or dignity. Instead the abuser seeks to control. The abuser seeks personal gain. Love is sacrificial and that is what is lacking.

So, this is a good goal-at any time, for anyone-to walk in love. This is what we should always seek. As we prepare for the Paschal Feast, a church word for Easter, we admit, this isn't a terribly special goal. We are simply eeking to "be prepared joyfully to celebrate the paschal feast." It's general enough that we should all want it. When we do this we will be better about serving our neighbor.

The thing about it, is this is all law. It's talking about what we do. All this talk about loving, and serving is Law. If we never get to the point about talking about what Christ has done or what He does, we will never leave discussion of the Law. Talking about Law is not bad. But we will never gain the power to live this way, unless we start talking about what Christ has done or does for us--the Gospel. The Gospel is the power to save.

Here's where we see the wrestling match. When we see how unnatural it is to love our neighbor, we are driven back to the cross. This doesn't mean it's difficult to do nice things for certain people. It is difficult to want to do it for all the rest. It's difficult to do this without making up our minds to do it, to do it always with a cheerful heart. Even after that, we struggle with the temptation to look at our improvements, rather than at the cross. If you do this, or it tried it this week, you know what I mean.

Just like Jesus does in our Gospel reading, this is Jesus breaking into Satan's kingdom. This talk about observing our sinfulness and then looking at the cross for forgiveness, in essence reliving our baptism, is charging into Satan's kingdom, full force. He doesn't want us to do that. He wants us to look at what we think is our improvement. The last thing he wants is for us to look to the cross. The last thing is to hear the Word that says in Christ, you are forgiven. In Christ, you are seen as holy and perfect. This is the Word that He hates.

He hated it so much, he attacked the Word, the incarnate Word, the Word became flesh, as He hung on the cross, to his own destruction. And Jesus, the Word, continues to do damage to Satan's kingdom.

Now, keep in mind, it's the Gospel that does that damage, not the Law. We can focus on being better and more loving people, but not a bit of damage is being done to his kingdom by doing that. Without the Gospel message that in Christ, we are completely forgiven; without returning to our baptism, by which we are declared perfect; without seeking the Lord's body and blood, by which we are given further forgiveness, nothing happens to his kingdom. But with that Word in our life, given to us as it is spoken and distributed in the sacrament, damage is done. Therefore, it's not what we do; it's never what we do.

In fact, as soon as we think it is what we do, we are in trouble. As soon as we think it is what we do, Satan's gaining the victory. He's actually improving his kingdom. He's regaining his lost ground. Our only hope, then, is in the Word. Our only hope to become more like Christ, to actually walk in love, will come from the Word doing its work in us.

Now, that sounds crazy to most people. In fact, it probably sounds pretty crazy to us. For me to say, "Just listen to the Word and believe what it says, is all you need to become a better Christian," sounds like a cheap…easy…and completely ineffective way to become a better person. Hearing the word and receiving it in the sacrament does not seem like it is going to do anything to Satan and his kingdom.

Which I suppose was the problem when Jesus was attacking Satan's kingdom in our reading. He casts out a demon from a mute man, and not everyone responded in faith. Two groups who saw it weren't impressed at all. One group said, "Big deal. This is a joke." The other group said, "That's nice. Now do something big. The third group responded in faith saying, "Wow. That's amazing!"

We'll first talk about the two groups who weren't impressed. One set, the religious leaders, mocked him. "Big deal. Demons are no big deal. Their like flies. They are about as scary as flies. A good swat, and they're dead. Jesus, you cast out demons, by the king of the flies, Beelzebul. Big deal."

Is that all you have, Jesus? How could you be the Messiah? This is a joke. They ignore what they clearly see. They see the finger of God and deny it. They reject His Messiahship.

These guys behave like the atheists of our day. Atheism seems to becoming more popular. Some evolutionistic atheists, in influential positions, even admit that they are simply trying to eradicate religion. They see religion as beneficial as knitting as a hobby. Some people like it, but it really doesn't do much. These guys deny God's power.

The other group, the second group, was looking for something more impressive. This is the group we need to watch out for. We can spot atheists a mile away. They don't seem to pose much threat to us or our faith. But we may find ourselves identifying with this second group. When we do we run the risk of reducing the effectiveness of the Word. This group had seen other people casting out demons and when Jesus did it, they thought, "That's nice, now do something convincing."

If we were to see an exorcism now, I would think we would be impressed. We don't see anything like them nowadays, but apparently possession was pretty common back then. Jesus even acknowledged that others were doing it. They would actually exorcise demons. The question is, were they actually being exorcised? Were the demons actually leaving because the demon recognized they were outranked? I don't think so.

That's why Jesus talks about an unclean spirit leaving and then coming back bringing more demons, making the situation worse. We tend to think the devil only operates by getting us to sin and do outwardly bad things. His best work is actually done by deception. These men who had cast out demons, taught the same as these men who mocked Jesus. Their doctrine was whacked. But when a demon leaves when he is told to leave, it makes it look like they are on the right track. People are drawn to follow them, believe their teaching, Then the state of that person is worse than the first. The ones casting out demons are also reinforced in a lie.

We see these kinds of things now. We see faith healings and other amazing things happen, and people believe it. They should believe it. Maybe a fair amount is fake, but not all. I doubt it was by the power of the Lord, but I believe it does happen. Was it by demons? I don't know. But it does have the effect of getting people to think this is what Christianity is about, or that this is the Lord's work. As they are drawn away from the truth, into this, their last state becomes worse than the first. The devil has deceived them.

Unfortunately, this kind of stuff seems more convincing than just the Word. Faith healing and miracles look more like God's work-a lot more like work we would expect God to do. The stuff we have for worship doesn't seem amazing at all.

It doesn't even have to be so amazing. Just seem more like work we expect from God. The least we think we should expect from worship is a feeling of His presence. We expect to feel some kind of thrill, something to make us sort of shiver. Without it, we question the whole experience. We wonder if God is really here. We don't question who Jesus is, but we question the way He comes. We seriously doubt that the Word and Sacraments could do much of anything, except basically waste our time. Spoken words, bread and wine, look like nothing.

Therefore, we make demands the way the people looking for signs had done. And if we don't get them, we are disappointed. We think we aren't asking that much, just a little proof. I find myself personally demanding proof that I'm on the right track in the form of numerical growth. If a church is not growing, I wonder if the Word is really working.

But when we do that, when we question the effectiveness of the Word, once again, we are giving up ground to Satan. We can't actually reduce its effectiveness, unless we water it down for the sake of getting what we want or actually replace it. Either way, if it's not there, it can't do what it is supposed to do. The ground Jesus has gained through the attacks on Satan's kingdom in the proclamation of the Word, is being lost, because trust in its effectiveness would be lost. We would be seeking something else to do the trick.

But finally there was the third group. These were the ones who marveled at the miracle; who recognized what this was. They realized that God was setting free His creation. They believed what they saw and said, "Amen," to it. They realized that the devil's kingdom was being attacked.

Was it impressive? Perhaps not. Chances are, they had seen exorcisms happen before. But they had not seen God in the flesh doing it. That's what made it impressive.

Do words spoken and bread and wine seem impressive? No. But it doesn't matter if its impressive or not. This is God working through them. This is God in the flesh being given to you, God giving it to you. It may not seem like anything impressive, but it is exactly what we need to achieve our goals of being prepared for Easter. Hear the Word of God and recognize it for what it is. This is how the Lord attacks the strong man and takes away his spoils, and how, through Him, denying yourself, you are strong.

AMEN