Sermon
10/29/17
Romans
5:1-11
Theology at the
Theatre: Les Misérables
How
many Harry Potter fans do we have out there? You might be saying to yourself,
“I thought we were talking about musicals, about Les Miserables today!” and we are. I promise I’ll get there…in a
minute. I love the Harry Potters series. My childhood pastor actually got me
hooked on them – he was reading and enjoying them, so I gave them a try. Some
of you know that I even have a Harry Potter closet under the stairs, like Harry
sleeps in in the first book, set up in my parsonage. I claim this is for my
niece and nephew to enjoy, but it’s at least 50% for me! Anyway, through the
years, author J.K. Rowling has continued to expand and explore the world of
Harry Potter that she has so masterfully created, and she is pretty free with
her comments about the series and characters. The villain of Harry Potter is
the evil Lord Voldemort, and people pretty universally think he’s awful. But
Harry also had a nemesis all through his school years, a rich, prejudiced, mean
& nasty fellow student named Draco Malfoy. Draco seems to express some
regret for his actions by the end of the series, but he’s never exactly one of
the good guys. Nonetheless, Draco’s character has lots of fans, and J.K. Rowling has written about how this fact
troubles her. She says: “I have often had
cause to remark on how unnerved I have been by the number of girls who fell for
this particular fictional character (although I do not discount the appeal of [actor]
Tom Felton, who plays Draco brilliantly in the films and, ironically, is about
the nicest person you will ever meet,” Rowling writes. “Draco has all the dark
glamour of the anti-hero; girls are very apt to romanticise such people. All of
this left me in the unenviable position of pouring cold common sense on ardent
readers’ daydreams, as I told them, rather severely, that Draco was not
concealing a heart of gold under all that sneering.”[1]
She does go on to say that there is “some unextinguished good at the heart
of Draco,” but she still doesn’t understand why so many people imagine that
Draco turns out to be not-so-bad after all.
Personally,
though, I’m not surprised at all that people imagine a more forgiving, loving
future for Draco than the life he experiences through the Harry Potter series,
that people want to imagine stories about how his heart is changed, and he
lives a different life in the imaginary future. I’m not surprised that people
imagine Draco’s redeeming, and I think the reason goes beyond young people
having a crush on the actor who plays Draco. Instead, I think people are drawn
to imagining a redeemed Draco Malfoy because redemption is our favorite story.
Redemption in everyday use means “the action of regaining…possession of
something in exchange for a payment, or clearing a debt.”[2]
If you take your recyclable soda bottles back to the store, you can redeem that
5 cents extra you paid when you purchased the drink. In theological language,
in God language, redemption takes this meaning to a deeper place. Redemption is
“the action of saving or being saved from sin, [from]…evil.” The idea is that
we have been lost to the power of sin and evil in our lives, but that God “buys
us back,” offering up the life of Jesus as payment for the consequences of our
sinfulness. Our hope in redemption, our hope in this idea that someone,
something, can save us from our sinfulness, save us from the evil path we
sometimes choose instead of the path of good? As I said, I think it is, as a
culture, maybe as a human race, one of our favorites stories. Today we will
sing one of our faith tradition’s favorite songs, “Amazing Grace.” Why do we
love it so much, this song? Because it is a redemption song, a story of being
saved even though we put ourselves on the wrong path so many times, a story
that lets us hope in God’s unlimited power to redeem us from sin and evil.
Les
MIsérables is a redemption story, a work that examines through
the lives of its characters themes of redemption and how we do – or don’t – long for redemption and offer
redemption to others. The musical Les MIsérables
is based on the incredible novel by Victor Hugo, composed by Claude-Michel
Schönberg and lyrics by Alain Boublil. The action takes place in France in the
early 1800s. The key player is a man named Jean Valjean. As the musical begins,
Valjean is being released from prison, where he’s served for 19 long years,
serving in hard labor. He served 5 for stealing the loaf of bread, but an
additional 14 years were added to his sentence for trying to escape from
prison. He gets a ticket of leave, and bears a brand on his chest with his
prisoner number 24601, both of which identify him to people as an ex-convict
and make it hard for him to start fresh. He can’t find work or a place to live.
Finally, a Bishop offers him food
and a place to stay, but Valjean steals silver from the Bishop and flees. He’s
caught by the police, who are ready to throw him back into prison. But instead,
the Bishop comes and vouches for Valjean, saying the silver was a gift, and
also giving him a set of silver candlesticks which the Bishop says Valjean
forgot. The Bishop says to Valjean: “Remember
this, my brother. See in this some higher plan. You must use this precious
silver to become an honest man. By the witness of the martyrs, by the Passion
and the Blood, God has raised you out of darkness. I have bought your soul for
God!”[3]
Valjean is overwhelmed with this act
of mercy that gives him a chance at a new life. “Why did I allow that man to touch my soul and teach me love?” he
wonders. “He treated me like any other.
He gave me his trust. He called me brother. My life he claims for God above.
Can such things be?” Valjean asks. “Take
an eye for an eye. Turn your heart into stone. This is all I have lived for.
This is all I have known. One word from him and I'd be back beneath the lash,
upon the rack. Instead he offers me my freedom. I feel my shame inside me like
a knife. He told me that I have a soul. How does he know? … As I stare into the
void, to the whirlpool of my sin, I'll escape now from that world, from the
world of Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean is nothing now. Another story must begin.”
He rips up his ticket of leave and
takes on a new identity, working hard to live a good life, constantly helping
others whenever he has the opportunity. There some other stories unfolding in Les Mis: Valjean’s adopted daughter
Cosette falls in love with a young man named Marius. Marius is involved in
student rebellion, a group of young revolutionaries who are concerned for the
plight of the poor and seek to overthrow the powerful government, particularly
after the only advocate in the government for the poor and downtrodden dies.
Valjean hates seeing Cosette fall in love, recognizing that he will lose his
role in her life if she marries and moves on, but because of how much he cares
for Cosette, he throws his lot in with the rebellion, which eventually fails,
in order to protect Marius for Cosette, never revealing his identity. (The
anthem the choir sang, “Bring Him Home,” is Valjean’s prayer to God to protect
Marius.) But throughout all these events, the main story unfolds. A police
captain, Inspector Javert, has hated Valjean since he was discharged from
prison. Javert, who was born in a prison to a criminal mother, lives his life according
to law and order. There is no room for grace and mercy in his life. And when he
realizes that Valjean is the ex-con with a new identity, Javert pursues him
relentlessly through the years. He’s obsessed with bringing Valjean to his idea
of justice. Says Javert, “So it is
written on the doorway to paradise that those who falter and those who fall must
pay the price!”
Eventually, though, Jean Valjean
gets the chance to kill Javert when Javert is caught out by the student
revolutionaries, trying to infiltrate their movement. At the least, Valjean has
the opportunity to let others kill
Javert and not speak up for him. How easy would that be? Instead, Valjean saves
Javert’s life, and Javert, in turn, lets Valjean go so that Valjean can save
Marius’s life too. After he lets Valjean go, Javert unravels, unable to figure
out why either he or Valjean acted with mercy. He says, “Who is this man? What sort of devil is he to have me caught in a trap
and choose to let me go free? It was his hour at last to put a seal on my fate,
wipe out the past and wash me clean off the slate! All it would take was a
flick of his knife. Vengeance was his and he gave me back my life!” “I am the
law and the law is not mocked.” “And must I now begin to doubt who never
doubted all these years?” Javert cannot reconcile mercy with the order of
law that has guided his life. In turmoil, he commits suicide.
Les
Mis is about two people struggling with the idea of redemption. Javert can’t
imagine that anyone is deserving of
redemption – and therefore he doesn’t extend it to others, ever. He can only
imagine that we are redeemed by following the rules, and so he seeks to do that
with expert precision, and feels that anyone who fails to adhere to the law in
complete perfection is worthless, irredeemable. No one can be perfect under the
law, though, and when Javert himself ignores the law, his world crumbles. Jean
Valjean, on the other hand, can’t imagine that he is worthy of redemption. But when the Bishop offers him
redemption so easily, so freely, so lovingly anyway, despite his unworthiness, Valjean can’t doubt it, can’t
ignore the gift of grace he’s received, even
if he feels like he is unworthy of it. He has experienced redemption, and
it transforms him, frees him to live a life serving others, even transforming
him into someone capable of offering grace and redemption to his very worst
enemy.
This
contrast between seeking our worthiness from perfect adherence to law, and
discovering that our value comes from being redeemed by God’s free gift of
grace is exactly the theme that Paul takes up in his epistle, his letter to the
Romans. Paul has spent the first four chapters of Romans explaining how Gentile
followers of Jesus – non-Jewish followers of Jesus – have come to be included
in God’s plan of saving grace even though they are not part of the covenant,
bound by the law of Moses, that the Jews have been part of for centuries. It
isn’t that we are so good at following the law that earns us a place with God, Paul argues. Even Abraham, to whom God
first gave the sign of the covenant in the act of circumcision, even Abraham
didn’t find his place with God because of
that covenant. Abraham’s relationship with God was built on faith and trust in
God’s grace and God’s promises. Our hope is in God, Paul writes, and our hope
does not disappoint us, because God’s love “has been poured into our hearts.”
We were sinners, and Jesus gives his life for us anyway. Paul uses the language of reconciliation – we are
reconciled to God through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. We are
redeemed by the actions of God in Jesus, and that can be our boast, our joy,
our celebration. We can’t boast in adherence to the law – we’ll never hold up
to that set of rules. But we can boast in the gift of grace that God gives us,
the gift that is available to each and every one of us. Paul writes with
passion and conviction in Romans. It is some of his most eloquent, in depth
work. Because the redemption story is Paul’s favorite story too.
Where
are we in this redemption story?
Sometimes, I think maybe we’re a bit more like Javert than we’d like to admit.
Both Javert and Valjean struggle to accept God’s grace for themselves. Indeed,
it is an awesome gift and we can
spend our whole lives in wonder, giving thanks for this gift that seems too
good to be true. But because grace seems too good to Javert, he can’t extend
grace and mercy to anyone. He can’t imagine that anyone can be redeemed from
their wrong choices. What about you? Have you accepted God’s redeeming love in
your life? Are you withholding redemption from someone, unable to believe that
God’s grace is for them, too? If you are, my prayer is that you will set them –
and yourself – free from the idea that we must be good enough to earn God’s
love and mercy, that you must earn what God wants to give as a gift. Jean
Valjean felt bowled over by the power of God’s redemptive grace in his life. It
was so powerful, this gift that he experienced through the Bishop’s
forgiveness, that his whole life was transformed, and he couldn’t stop
extending mercy to others, whenever he had the chance. What about you? What
about us? How are you letting God’s redeeming love change your life? What’s the
new life you can live because God has redeemed you from the power of sin and
evil? What opportunities to shower others with grace and mercy do you have,
waiting for you to take action?
“Therefore, since we are justified
by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we
have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope
of sharing the glory of God … and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s
love has been poured into our hearts.” Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1]
Rowling, J.K., as quoted in Time magazine,
http://time.com/3644311/jk-rowling-harry-potter-draco-malfoy/
[2]
https://www.google.com/search?q=redemption+definition&rlz=1C1CHZL_enUS691US691&oq=redemption+definition&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.4016j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
[3]
Boubil, A., and C. Schonber, Les Misérables.
All lyrics quoted here and following available online at https://www.allmusicals.com/l/lesmiserables.htm.
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