“Jesus Christ remakes you into a palace in which He lives” Oculi 2025

23. March 2025

Lent 3

Luke 11:14-28

“When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it swept and put in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first.” (Lk 11:24–26).

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

Jesus tells us that even if we sweep out the dust and dirt and decorate our houses, it doesn’t stop an evil spirit—or eight—from entering. No matter how often you clean, declutter, or deep clean your home, you cannot prevent the infiltration of sin and evil. More must be done than just putting up shelves and applying a fresh coat of paint. Your life doesn’t need another HGTV renovation show. To demon-proof your home, you’ll need to rebuild.

Imagine yourself as a living house, just as St. Peter does (1 Peter 2). God has to come in to do a teardown to the bare earth, lay a new foundation, and rebuild that house. At first, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right, stopping the leaks in the roof, and so on; you knew those jobs needed doing, so you are not surprised. But, today, He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of or dreamed of— using a HELOC and tax return, throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards.

You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage, but He’s coming in with a bulldozer and is building a palace. Why? He intends to come and live in it Himself. If that doesn’t appeal to you, did you ever bother to ask whether you, who regularly ask God to interfere openly and directly in your world, quite realized what it would be like when He did? When God comes, things happen: big things. When God comes to rebuild, it’s not just the end of your three-bedroom, two-bath dream house. It is the end of your old world and the beginning of a totally new one.

God comes to invade. But what is the good of saying you are on His side when you see the whole universe melting away like a dream, and something else that never entered your mind to imagine comes crashing in? What happens when God does something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? What if this new reality comes with a Word that disobeys all our rules and regulations, doesn’t care about our zoning laws, and is fundamentally lawless?

You see, it is not just that you have a problem with evil spirits, demons, and devils residing in the pantry or guest bedroom. Clean and sweep and tip-top, and everything is better. No, the world is enemy-occupied territory — that is what this world is. That is why we hear over and over in the Gospels that Jesus, even though He is the king, is not welcomed by His subjects. Someone has usurped His authority. Something has stolen away His worship.

 So, in the New Testament, we learn that Jesus’ story, and then the Christian story, is about how the rightful king has landed—you might say landed in disguise—and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. He comes to overcome the Strong Man of his goods with a older magic, a greater Word. “What but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s power?”

When you go to church, for example, you are really listening in to the secret-now-revealed wireless messages from our Heavenly Father and his celestial friends. That is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent you from going. He cannot have you hearing the complete and free forgiveness in Jesus’s Name. So he deceives you, thinking church is about obedience and following the rules. He does it by playing on your conceit, laziness, and intellectual snobbery.

And I know someone will ask me, “Do you mean, at this time, when we have evolved so far past ancient superstitions, to re-introduce our old friend the devil — hoofs and horns and all?” What does the time or a useless belief in evolution have to do with it? I’ll grant you, I am not particular about the hoofs and horns. But, in other respects, my answer is, “Yes, I do mean to re-introduce our old friend, the devil.” He is beautiful, charming, serpentine, and clothed in fiery gems, and you could not withstand his advances with an army. And he speaks the words you want to hear. So if any of you wants to know him better, I would tell that person, “Don’t worry. If you want to know him, you will and probably already do. Whether you’ll like it when you recognize it is another question.”

Why, then, is God landing in this enemy-occupied world in disguise? Why is He starting a sort of secret society to undermine the devil? Why is he not landing in force, invading it? Is it that He is not strong enough? Cannot He call down twelve legions of angels?

We confess that He is going to land in force; we do not know when. But we can guess why. He is delaying. He wants to give everyone a chance to hear and believe the deeper magic of the Holy Gospel and, by His Spirit, join His side. You may think that all hope is lost and there’s no future. There are many hoping for the best yet planning for the worst. But don’t worry, God will invade; His Gospel is preached. You are forgiven in Jesus’ Name!

And then, on that last day, it will be God without disguise. It will be so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time to pick a side. It will be when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not. Today, this moment is when God sends His preacher to elect you to the right side. God is holding back that final judgment to give you the only Word that can save you. But it will not last forever. We must take it or leave it.

When we put it down, we choose to surrender. When He picks us back up, we fight because Christianity is a fighting faith. It thinks God made the world — that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colors and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God “made up out of His head” as a man makes up a story. But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on putting them right again, rebuilding one house, one soul, at a time, all by His absolving Word.

That’s why the Church exists — that’s Christianity. We have been rebuilt into palaces so that our walls and gates, our towers and colonnades, can resist the assaults of the usurper. That’s the death and resurrection of Holy Baptism (Romans 6). The Church is where we muster and get our instructions for proceeding with the campaign. It is not just a place to meet friends. It is not just a place to hear motivational speeches. It is not just a place to drink coffee and chat. Church is a war room where we plan for the next offensive, following the Angel of the LORD who fights for us on the plain. It is serious business, and so, it is no wonder that our Enemy wants to keep us and others away, scaring us, vilifying us, and convincing people that we are the evil ones, the demons, even the devil himself.

But the really good news is that Jesus tells us that because He has already overcome, we will win, too. “The gates of Hell cannot withstand our efforts” (Matthew 16:18), He says. And so don’t see yourself as a run-down old shack or even a cute, inviting cottage. Don’t think Christ comes to do a little renovation job. His Word is death and resurrection, confession and absolution. And by His gifts, Jesus Christ remakes you into a palace in which He lives and from which he launches his infiltrations into the lands the devil has usurped from Him.

Jesus has chosen you in by the Gospel to go out and demon-proof the world. That means every time the Holy Gospel breaks out—in baptism, prayer, hymn, liturgy, celebration of the Sacrament, Bible class, and Gospel sermon, every “Jesus bless you” as you commend someone to Christ’s keeping, and in each act of Christian charity— Christ is inviting you to participate in another attack on the devil’s prison camps and more territory reclaimed for our rightful king. Thanks be to God!

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
St. John Ev. Lutheran Church & School - Sherman Center
Random Lake, Wisconsin

With thanks to the sainted C.S. Lewis.