SERMON Black Nail Polish

Epiphany 4 (B) (2009):

Deuteronomy 18;15-20; Psalm 111; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28

When I hear Paul in his letter to the Corinthians this morning, I think of black nail polish. And of a wonderful word that Lutherans have.

The word Lutheran's have is "adiaphora." It even sounds wonderful, doesn't it? In Greek it means "things that make no difference." Adiaphora is mainly defined by what it is not. What it is not is the Gospel -- that we are justified by grace through faith. What it is not are the Gospel preached in its purity and the Sacraments administered according to the Word. After that, things can be adiaphora or not depending on how they relate to the Gospel, Word, and Sacrament. Every generation of Lutherans has had its own disagreements about what is or is not adiaphora.

When I was growing up, there is no question about where drinking and smoking fell on any adiaphorist scale with the Methodists and Presbyterians on my father's side of the family -- many of them clergy. Like the generations before them, abstinence from alcohol and tobacco were tenets of the faith. No adiaphora there. No drinking or smoking ever. By contrast, my mother's Norwegian family and their Norwegian Lutheran synod considered drinking and smoking adiaphora, although no one in my mother's family did much of either. (There was, I should add, another Norwegian Lutheran synod that did not share those views.)

My father was something of rebel among his Methodist and Presbyterian relatives. He did not drink or smoke, but it was not for religious reasons. He had done both in college and medical school. As a doctor, he knew that he could be called at any time of the day or night to treat an accident victim. As a result, he would have a beer or wine with a meal only when he was on vacation and out of town. Never when he was in a position where he might be called. He did not smoke because a friend of his had done a residency with one of the first doctors ever to study the effects of smoking on the lungs. With his friend, he stopped smoking purely for heath reasons.

Even so, he and my mother were suspect in his family. This was the case because one afternoon when I was very young, he and my mother had rid the closets of years of bottles of booze (mostly scotch) given to him by patients for Christmas. My very proper Presbyterian grandmother was coming to visit from out of town and they did not want her to accidentally see all the bottles and think that they were drinking. Friends who did drink had agreed to drop by to pick up the supply -- apparently quite a large one that was stacked in the middle of the living room. Before the friends arrived, however, my grandmother showed up. She had taken an earlier bus. She was horrified. Really, really horrified. It apparently took years for her to believe that my parents had not fallen from grace.

Despite my mother's background, when I was growing up, no one would ever think of serving any wine other than communion wine or any kind of alcoholic beverage at any function at our very large Lutheran church. At the same time, we all learned in confirmation that things like drinking (unless to excess of course) or smoking (this was before the Surgeon General's report in 1964) were adiaphora. Even so, no one ever, ever smoked a cigarette in the church, and the pastor was roundly criticized for smoking a pipe in his study. So what was going on?

Well, I think in many ways, what was going on was very similar to what was going on in the Corinthian church. The issue in Corinth was whether it was right to eat food that had been offered to idols. Now this was not -- forgive the pun -- an idle question. All kinds of foods were offered to various gods. Once offered, the food had to be eaten. Some was sold by vendors. Some, however, was eaten on site. Archaeological digs have found that the "Idol's Temple" to which Paul probably refers had three dining rooms in which at least some cooking was done on one side of the temple courtyard. Seven small tables allowed for the placement of several couches at which eleven persons could recline "at table" during the meal. The temple rented its dining facilities not only for occasions with religious overtones like celebrations of births, weddings, and cures, but for social events as well. Christians were asked to attend all of these events. And many did.

Now for the Corinthian Christians who did not grow up worshiping idols and who really believed and knew that "there is no God but one" -- for the Corinthian Christians who did not believe in the existence of the so called gods in heaven -- that is, the sun, moon, star, fire, sea or wind -- and "many gods and lords" -- that is, the gods of popular belief like Zeus and Apollo as well as the emperors -- for these Christians eating the food offered to idols posed no issue of faith. It was purely adiaphora. Just as drinking wine at a wedding reception in the fellowship hall of my childhood church might have been for my mother if it had ever happened. It didn't, of course, happen.

And why it didn't is not unlike what was being reported to Paul as happening in Corinth. In Corinth, some Christians had grown up worshiping idols and associated meals at the temple with reverence for those idols. For them, eating that food was closely associated with issues of faith in idols. They could not be true to their Christian faith and eat the food that they once ate when they worshiped the idols. The two things were too closely associated. As such, those Corinthians were not unlike the Lutherans who had grown up in the other Norwegian Lutheran tradition who were also members of my home church. For them, abstinence was closely associated with their religious faith and any drinking of alcoholic beverages, especially in the church proper, compromised their faith.

And whether conscious or not, my home congregation was implementing what Paul recommends this morning. If a practice, even if it is adiaphora, is going to compromise someone else's faith, don't do it.

Which brings me to the black nail polish.

In our congregation in Evanston, where our children grew up, confirmands served as acolytes. One of their jobs was to pick up the empty cups from communicates. One Sunday morning our older daughter -- now a respected mathematician, a devoted wife, and the mother of our beautiful grandchildren -- was serving as an acolyte.

My husband and I were both kneeling at the communion rail, about to give her our glasses, when five black fingernails with a silver star on the middle of each reached down and picked up our glasses. How both polish and stars had been applied in the half hour between breakfast and church was beyond our comprehension. But there they were. Understand, this was a time when only Madonna and (maybe) Laurie Anderson wore black fingernail polish. My husband and I could only look disbelieving at each other and wish that the earth below would open up.

When we got home, we explained that black fingernails might easily get in the way of some people's ability to worship. If she had known the word "adiaphora," she would have used it. She didn't, and we prevailed.

But that's really the issue, isn't it? When is adiaphora honored and when isn't it? Or, more to the point, when does a practice stop being adiaphora and when does it become unacceptable?

Remember when federal district court Judge Lefkow's mother and husband were murdered? The first person suspected was Matthew Hale, an Illinois racist and white supremacist, head of what had been called The World Church of the Creator. A person already in jail for attempting to arrange the murder of the judge.

Are racist beliefs like Matthew Hale's ever mere adiaphora? After all, there are still churches that call themselves Christian -- churches like the World Church of the Creator -- that not only exclude others because of their race or nationality but advocate programs of white supremacy. But are they really churches? Really Christian? Are those beliefs mere adiaphora?

They are not. And the reason they are not is reflected in what Jesus is about today. As individuals now living in the third millennium, we have a tendency to want to explain away today's gospel as a case of Jesus' compassion for one man that led to the healing of that man's mental illness and possible epilepsy. But that's not what it is about at all.

Remember last week's gospel? Jesus had just begun his public ministry preaching that the Kingdom of God was at hand. He had called his four disciples. Now he had gone to the synagogue in Capernaum on a sabbath where those listening acknowledged that he taught as if he had authority. But did he have authority?

Enter the man with the unclean or evil spirit. "Unclean" because it was unworthy to be in the presence of God. "Evil" because it was hostile to God. Such spirits were known to the author of Mark and to his readers and to those listening to Jesus in Capernaum -- even as they are known by a majority of people living on this planet today.

To those living in the first century to name something was to control it. And that is exactly what the spirit tries to do when it names Jesus. "I know who you are," it declares, "the Holy One of God." The spirit does not succeed. Jesus rebukes the spirit -- and the word here really means commands. Decisively. In essence Jesus tells the spirit to -- in the strongest of terms -- to shut up and get out of the man. And the spirit does. And there is no question after that Jesus speaks with authority. This very action is, according to those present, "a new teaching."

But what is the teaching? Above all, it is a teaching about the Kingdom of God. A demonstration of what the Kingdom of God is and will be all about. About confronting and subduing evil. About making the unclean pure. About inclusiveness. About the wholeness that the sabbath represents. And in all that there is no place for racism or bigotry or hatred or oppression. Racism, bigotry, hatred, and oppression are never adiaphora. Ever.

Between black fingernails with silver stars and wine served at a church function, on the one hand, and the hatred of a Matthew Hale, on the other, there are a lot of gray areas. As a community of faith, we must always be sensitive to the food served to idols issues. And, at the same time, we must be willing to discern, confront, and subdue all that opposes the authority of the Gospel. And we can do both because we are a people redeemed by God's grace, nurtured in God's love, and nourished at God's table. And for that we give God honor and glory. Amen.

February 1, 2009

Ruth VanDemark, pastor

Wicker Park Lutheran Church . Chicago . Illinois