“Coram Deo”

Ep.2/B/January 15, 2011

                                                                                Rev. Phillip R. Fenton

 

As a small boy, our middle child was easy to pick out of a crowd. He was born with an orange-size birthmark on the top back of his head. The hair there was dark brown and coarse, in sharp contrast to his predominant wispy blond curls. He could be in a flock of 30 kids on a playground 100 feet away, but no problem. That brown spot broadcast his location like a beacon light.

 

As he got older, all of his hair turned dark, and his special “mark” blended in. But there are other imprints as strong and reliable in distinguishing him to his parents. I once visited him at college. I arrived on campus more than an hour before our arranged meeting time.  There wasn’t much activity as classes were in session. Then, a bell, and, like ants, students began to spill out of surrounding buildings – wave after wave of them.  Long before I distinguished his face among them, something else caught my attention. It was a particular movement in all of the movement, a stride, a carriage of body, which, out of all the strides and carriages, was uniquely familiar to me.

 

The movement stopped. I could see his face now. He stopped because she had caught his arm and pulled him from the flow into a little pool of calm beside a building. As I watched, she offered him a cigarette. “No son,” I said to myself.  “Don’t take it. You don’t smoke. You don’t want that.”  He took it; she lit it for him.  They talked and smoked. 

 

All of a sudden, without looking my way, I knew he was aware of my gaze. His body jerked.  He tossed the half-smoked cigarette aside. He turned toward me and our eyes met.  He told her goodbye and walked to where I was sitting.

 

We didn’t talk about what just happened. We didn’t need to.  Ever since he had been that that little boy with the dancing brown spot, he knew that he lived under the constant gaze of his parents. For a long while, it had been a welcome, comforting awareness to him.  The growing child ventures further and further, exploring, testing the limits of his freedom, but every few minutes he looks back to make sure Mom or Dad are keeping vigil.  The child becomes a teenager and that same watchful oversight becomes a symbol of oppression, and the child’s goal is to get as far away from its scrutiny as possible.  Then the adult child gets into trouble, has a financial crisis, a relationship goes terribly bad, and he is glad to discover that Mom and Dad are still there, that they have never left their post.

And so it goes – for all of us. You have been characters in this parable as well.

 

It is not unlike our relationship with God. I have said all of the above so that I can say this:  there is a term that comes from the Church’s tradition that captures the essence of Christian life – Coram Deo.  To live Coram Deo is to live one’s entire life before the face of God, in the presence of God, under the authority of God, to the glory of God.  It involves recognizing that there is no higher goal than offering honor to God. Our lives are to be living sacrifices, oblations offered in a spirit of adoration and gratitude.

 

Coram Deo. We are before God in the most public times of our lives, but also in the most private times – in the privacy of our thoughts; in the secretiveness of our most confidential desires.

 

And sometimes this is a welcome and comforting thought. But, at other times, it is an unwanted pressure. Listen again to the psalmist – you hear both. It could be either/or, depending on your situation:

 

O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit and when I stand.  You know my

thoughts from a distance…You are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word reaches my lips

you already know what I am going to say. You have me hemmed in … Where could I hide from your Spirit? 

How far and fast would I have to run to escape your presence?      Psalm 139:1ff

 

Coram Deo – always in the presence of God, a welcome thing when it’s about the untiring attention, adoration, and protection of a parent-God. My first funeral as a pastor was to preside over a death by suicide. Joseph, a beautiful young man, a deeply religious young man, died due to an illness as profound as I have ever seen.  Some of you have likely lived the nightmare or trying to save the life of a family member of friend in the grips of depression.  Perhaps you, too, have lost them to death.  If so, then you’ve known a sense of helplessness unparalleled by any other.  The illness puts the suffering one beyond the reach of help – from family, friends,  counselors, doctors - everyone. It shrouds him in an impenetrable darkness. What could I possibly say to Joseph’s young widow, and to an entire congregation of people standing in a swirl of “Whys?” that have no answers? I couldn’t find the words within me. So I turned to the God around me and read:

 ⁷ Where can I go from your Spirit?  Where can I flee from your presence?  ⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I lie down in the depths, you are there. ⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, ¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. ¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” ¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.

Joseph may have been beyond our reach, but was never beyond God’s. Joseph was and is with God.  We are with God.

 

There are other times when we know our lives are out of focus, conflicted and not pleasing to God. At such a time Coram Deo is an awful presence.  Just think back over your last 24-48 hours, and let me ask, “Is it always such a welcome thought that God knows everything about us - our actions, our thoughts, our desires, our feelings and imaginations? God is in the details, the psalm says, there is not one that is hidden from him. Right now does that make you want to stand up and cheer or run and hide?

 

Coram Deo.  It is with this awareness that Paul writes his letter to the people of Corinth, concerning, in this case, sexual relationships with prostitutes. Corinthian men have justified frequenting of prostitutes with the argument – “I live by grace, not law.  And, after all, it’s just my body that’s involved not my eternal spirit!” But Paul won’t allow such compartmentalization. Even the expression of our sexuality, he argues, is something that either honors or dishonors God. There is no aspect of our lives lived outside of Coram Deo.  When we live in the presence of God, all things are potentially sacred.

 

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.    I Corinthians 6:19-20

 

To live all of life Coram Deo is to live a life of integrity. It is a life of wholeness that finds its unity and coherency in the will of God. A fragmented life is a life of disintegration. A life compartmentalized into the religious and the non-religious is marked by inconsistency, disharmony, confusion, conflict, contradiction, and chaos. All of life is religious or none of life is religious.

 

This means that if a person fulfills his or her vocation as a rancher, an attorney, or a homemaker Coram Deo, then that person is acting every bit as religiously as a soul-winning evangelist who fulfills his vocation. It means that David was as religious when he obeyed God’s call to be a shepherd as he was when he was anointed with the special grace of kingship. It means that Jesus was every bit as religious when He worked in His father’s carpenter shop as He was in the Garden of Gethsemane.

 

Integrity is found where men and women live their lives in a pattern of consistency. It is a pattern that functions the same basic way in church and out of church. It is a life that is open before God. It is a life in which all that is done is done as to the Lord.

 

I think our world today yearns for people with such awareness. Who are the people you respect for their integrity?  Survey those who manage people in the workplace. Ask them, “What’s the #1 thing you would like to see in your employees?”  They are going to answer, “integrity”. They are looking for people who understand that showing up on time and not leaving before time and not calling in sick constantly shows that a person is aware of his/her interrelatedness to others and is willing to accept that responsibility.  They are looking for people of strong ethical and moral character – when “the boss” is watching and when he is not.  I believe such integrity is the #1 thing that spouses are looking for in their mates.  And I think it’s the #1 thing that young people are looking for in their parents.  They are all looking for integrity, lives lived with the constant sense of the presence of God, lives that exhibit the in-dwelling of the Holy.

 

I think we intuitively sense that when we live under the watchful eye of God, it is only then that we are truly free. I think we know deep in our bones that until the soul and God find one another and make a home together, there is disharmony.

 

Honor God with your whole being.  Think often of Coram Deo, and the living of your ordinary days will become the site of the most glorious worship imaginable.

 

Amen.