Pastor Darren: Well, like I said, we are starting our Lenten journey.
Pastor Darren: You know, I found this curriculum, this material, in Cokesbury, our United Methodist publishing house, and I looked at it and I went oh, this is going to be exciting, I really want to do this.
Pastor Darren: Well.
Pastor Darren: So I went to Gloria and I said, Gloria, I really like this, right, so I want to do it.
Pastor Darren: But if we can't do it well this year, I want to save it.
Pastor Darren: And she said we're due for something new and creative.
Pastor Darren: So here we are.
Pastor Darren: Are you liking new and creative?
Pastor Darren: At least half an hour in.
Pastor Darren: I hope you're enjoying it as we start this Lenten journey and it should be fun.
Pastor Darren: So the material we're working from is this author Matt Rall.
Pastor Darren: He's a pastor over in Louisiana, one of our own pastors.
Pastor Darren: He wrote this book called the Grace of Les Miserables and it's built around the original story by a man named Victor Hugo in France.
Pastor Darren: He was writing in the 1860s, about the time in France, about probably 50 years before that, up until about 10 years before, and it's the story with a backdrop of French turmoil and and revolution happening in the 1800s.
Pastor Darren: And you'll remember from your history class, or maybe I'll be reminding you, that a lot of our own democratic ideals and understandings.
Pastor Darren: We, you know we became the democratic experiment here as a new nation after our own revolution.
Pastor Darren: Those ideas, that thinking, was originating in France.
Pastor Darren: In fact a lot of our founding fathers went over there to learn about democracy as they were figuring out how they were going to implement it.
Pastor Darren: So the backdrop we have here.
Pastor Darren: We can remember that the French were looking at what had happened here and now trying to apply a lot of the thinking that they had originated in their own country.
Pastor Darren: And what you might also remember is that it was a really big stage show.
Pastor Darren: It continues to be a big stage show Late 80s, into the 90s and on continuing with some really powerful music that people have really enjoyed.
Pastor Darren: And in fact we watched.
Pastor Darren: What they did was filming a live version of the stage show last week and had a really good time with it.
Pastor Darren: So that gives you a little bit of the backdrop of the story that we're going to be working with for six weeks and for today.
Pastor Darren: Each week we kind of delve into a character.
Pastor Darren: Today we delve into the main character, jean Valjean.
Pastor Darren: He is, like I say, the main character.
Pastor Darren: The story, at least in this stage version, opens with him doing really hard, hard labor in prison.
Pastor Darren: He had been arrested and convicted for stealing bread for his niece and his nephew who were going hungry.
Pastor Darren: The sentence for stealing bread for his hungry niece and nephew five years.
Pastor Darren: But he had served 19 because he kept trying to escape.
Pastor Darren: So finally he escapes one more time and after the escape he ends up in this church.
Pastor Darren: He is stealing from the church.
Pastor Darren: He gets caught and what happens?
Pastor Darren: But the bishop forgives him, tells the police that are there, that no, it was a mistake, and in fact gives him two candlesticks of a certain amount of value I don't know, maybe like these right here and lets them take them to to start something new in his life.
Pastor Darren: So he goes, he makes his way in the world and stage version, movie version we catch up with him many years later.
Pastor Darren: He turns out to be quite successful.
Pastor Darren: He is a man of certain wealth, he's owning factories and is even the mayor.
Pastor Darren: But all the while he is being pursued by Inspector Javert.
Pastor Darren: He is being pursued by Inspector Javert.
Pastor Darren: Inspector Javert is somebody who's obsessed with justice.
Pastor Darren: If this was your sentence, you need to live out your sentence.
Pastor Darren: You did wrong.
Pastor Darren: You need to pay the price.
Pastor Darren: Valjean had assumed a different identity so he had been able to live kind of in the public, but without being caught or seen by Javert, understood to be who he really was.
Pastor Darren: But that threat lives throughout the whole story because Valjean is always in this place of being exposed to be who he was, this person who had escaped jail, escaped his pen, his punishment.
Pastor Darren: The complication really starts coming to a head when he learns of this young woman, Fantine.
Pastor Darren: Fantine had a baby, didn't have the money to be able to provide for the baby, left it with this other innkeeper couple and was now trying to work and working in one of Valjean's factories.
Pastor Darren: The workers in the factory, along with the guy leading the factory, really mistreat her for different reasons.
Pastor Darren: She ends up losing the job, ends up having to live on the streets doing sex work, donating her hair, donating her teeth.
Pastor Darren: She really is this example of somebody completely victimized by the world around her.
Pastor Darren: And in the midst of that Valjean is convicted.
Pastor Darren: He has conflict in his own heart because he knows helping Fantine brings attention to him and his possible being revealed for who he was.
Pastor Darren: But then it even gets a stronger concern complication, because they arrest and are about to convict a man for being Jean Valjean when he knows he's Jean Valjean.
Pastor Darren: In other words, somebody else is going to serve his punishment for him, and so, just as Javert has his sense of justice, valjean's got his own sense of justice.
Pastor Darren: Can I let somebody pay the price for my actions, especially given that my revealing myself might lead me into being punished?
Pastor Darren: You know, having to live out that crime, a punishment for a crime.
Pastor Darren: That was iffy to start.
Pastor Darren: Well, he does stand up and claim who he is, and in the Broadway version it is with a powerful song that you're going to hear this morning, so I hope you're excited about that.
Pastor Darren: He avoids being arrested, though, and hides out in the church again, manages to raise Fantine daughter, Cosette, and his story arc kind of culminates with his unconditional love saving Cosette romantic love life partner at great risk to himself, an amazing sacrifice.
Pastor Darren: His story arc finishes with those two people recognizing it was him who had made the sacrifice to save Marius Cosette love, and so he gets the blessing of being able to be understood as the person who had loved that deeply, that unconditionally, and for us reading the story, especially us Christians, we would say he learned grace, the value of grace.
Pastor Darren: We need an intermission.
Pastor Darren: I'm sorry to do so much summary like that, but it's first week and y'all need to know the story for it all to make sense.
Pastor Darren: But hopefully you're understanding too this theological concept of grace.
Pastor Darren: God's unconditional love is really at the center of all of this.
Pastor Darren: We're pretty good at understanding in our heads what that word means.
Pastor Darren: I have a relatively good relationship with my spouse, with my kids.
Pastor Darren: I know what it means to live unconditionally, to live unconditionally.
Pastor Darren: And yet, as for claiming it as a life philosophy, a way about living your day-to-day not just with those closest to you, not just to those you consider to be good, but with everybody.
Pastor Darren: Grace for all God's children, we might wrestle with that a little bit.
Pastor Darren: Unconditional love, that's good for God, all right, I don't know if I can pull it off.
Pastor Darren: That's a little more complicated.
Pastor Darren: This is where I turn to our passage for today, paul's letter to the Ephesians, the people in Ephesus, paul's letter.
Pastor Darren: It's really to this community, this new church, Christian community.
Pastor Darren: And remember, christianity is just kind of getting off the ground, especially in this sort of organized way.
Pastor Darren: It kind of was just a movement when Jesus was around.
Pastor Darren: Now they're trying to formalize it, create these communities, so these teachings that Paul's doing in these letters.
Pastor Darren: They are foundational teachings, right?
Pastor Darren: In many ways, some people feel like Paul actually is the one who birthed the church, because he's the one who did that work to help us understand how we were going to live together, how we were going to be church together, how we were going to live out what Jesus taught us about life together.
Pastor Darren: So important, important theological lessons.
Pastor Darren: So this particular lesson I can summarize in one, phraseed by grace through faith, saved by grace through faith.
Pastor Darren: Big words, am I right?
Pastor Darren: Saved, that's a big word when we're talking about that as part of our condition.
Pastor Darren: Saved, what am I being saved from?
Pastor Darren: I didn't choose to be born.
Pastor Darren: Why did I need to be saved in this place?
Pastor Darren: What do you mean by saved Grace, a concept we already sort of wrestle with Right Going to be wrestling with it this morning even more.
Pastor Darren: And then faith, grace through faith.
Pastor Darren: If grace is unconditional love, then where's faith come?
Pastor Darren: Do I need to have faith in order to get grace?
Pastor Darren: Are you telling me that God won't love me until I have faith Because that's a condition, isn't it?
Pastor Darren: It's a massive theological statement that he makes in just this short, short way.
Pastor Darren: Good questions for us to wrestle with.
Pastor Darren: I think?
Pastor Darren: Do you like to wrestle with questions?
Pastor Darren: Questions for us to wrestle with, I think.
Pastor Darren: Do you like to wrestle with questions?
Pastor Darren: Ooh, y'all might be in the wrong church, because I love this stuff If you want it easy, I don't know what you got to do here.
Pastor Darren: So why do we have trouble accepting God's grace, right?
Pastor Darren: Isn't this Valjean's kind of thing?
Pastor Darren: He has trouble.
Pastor Darren: He lived in such a horrible existence, a graceless existence, and then grace comes to him, but he doesn't trust it.
Pastor Darren: He wrestles with it.
Pastor Darren: We wrestle with this idea of unconditional love, which is sort of weird when you think about it, because who wouldn't want unconditional love?
Pastor Darren: Right, we're going to take that if it's offered to us.
Pastor Darren: With the story of Valjean, maybe we can understand why he would mistrust grace, coming from such a graceless experience.
Pastor Darren: But it does make me wonder why we might wrestle with grace.
Pastor Darren: Most of us have done okay in life Ups, downs, maybe more ups than downs.
Pastor Darren: We have at least as much reason to trust the world, to trust God, to trust the people in this world, as we do to mistrust all of those.
Pastor Darren: So why do we often wrestle with grace being true, being real, being meaningful?
Pastor Darren: Is it because we have trouble living it?
Pastor Darren: Is it because we have difficulty offering grace to everyone?
Pastor Darren: God can do it, but I'm not sure I can pull it off.
Pastor Darren: I mean that cynicism would be hard to argue with.
Pastor Darren: Some people are really bad in our world, really broken in our world.
Pastor Darren: I remember a pastor joke I got you heard of dad jokes.
Pastor Darren: I'll give you the pastor joke for today.
Pastor Darren: Man gets out of his car after having an accident.
Pastor Darren: He's very frustrated, he's very angry.
Pastor Darren: He goes to the other driver and he says why can't people learn how to drive?
Pastor Darren: You're the fourth car I've hit today.
Pastor Darren: Some people are broken and hurt, not in a good place, and we've been hurt by these folks.
Pastor Darren: It can be difficult to offer grace to all and yet I wonder if our difficulty with grace, our difficulty in truly believing in grace, is something else.
Pastor Darren: We have another reason to distrust God.
Pastor Darren: When we think of grace and we think about loving everyone, we often envision the worst of us.
Pastor Darren: Right, and I turn to the choir when I say it.
Pastor Darren: We often envision there's a reason, they're behind a wall.
Pastor Darren: I'm just teasing, but we do.
Pastor Darren: We think of the worst of us.
Pastor Darren: You know, we're going to test the theory Love everybody.
Pastor Darren: Well, we don't think about the ones we love first, we think about the ones we don't love so much.
Pastor Darren: And we go and we try to test this theory of grace.
Pastor Darren: Would this really work?
Pastor Darren: Can I really love everyone?
Pastor Darren: And then we go and we start making up some sort of rubric to figure it out.
Pastor Darren: All right, this sin, right here, is a five, this one's a two, this one's a 37.
Pastor Darren: So you're getting these people, maybe?
Pastor Darren: Oh, but you're and we're.
Pastor Darren: I'm going to need a spreadsheet to figure out what really qualifies.
Pastor Darren: And we're able to get around, see, and we're laughing a little bit, but you engineers out there, you've tried to do that, haven't you?
Pastor Darren: I know engineers, you've tried to figure it all out.
Pastor Darren: And we end up in this place where we're trying to create this system.
Pastor Darren: But we also have to recognize that by loving everyone, it means all the people, even the good ones.
Pastor Darren: And have we ever really asked ourselves is anyone really all good?
Pastor Darren: Where are the lines?
Pastor Darren: Who gets to make the lines?
Pastor Darren: What are the people that we are willing to offer grace to?
Pastor Darren: The ones we're willing to love, and where's that line to where we don't need to, to the ones we're willing to love, and where's that line to where we don't need to?
Pastor Darren: To me, it's even a slippery slope to go to the next stage when we say how can God?
Pastor Darren: love everyone.
Pastor Darren: How long does it take for that question to lead us to the mirror?
Pastor Darren: Is it possible?
Pastor Darren: What we're really saying is how can God really love me unconditionally?
Pastor Darren: You know we are our biggest critics.
Pastor Darren: We are our biggest critics.
Pastor Darren: We are our own biggest critics.
Pastor Darren: And you know why?
Pastor Darren: Because we know what we've gotten away with, am I right?
Pastor Darren: We know what we've gotten away with.
Pastor Darren: We know what we continue to get away with the bigger things, the not so big things.
Pastor Darren: Only we know how imperfect we can be, how imperfect we truly are.
Pastor Darren: Is it possible that when we consider the possibility of the reality of God's grace and being able to live God's unconditional love for us and for everyone, that we aren't always sure that we believe it about ourselves?
Pastor Darren: We're not sure that we are fully worthy of unconditional love?
Pastor Darren: To me, this is why Paul's words in Ephesians are so powerful, so important.
Pastor Darren: Look at what it says Saved by grace through faith.
Pastor Darren: Why does our unconditional love, god's grace, have to come through faith?
Pastor Darren: Because you have to believe it for it to be real.
Pastor Darren: If we want it to be real in our heart and real in our lives, then we're going to have to believe that it is true.
Pastor Darren: We're going to have to believe that God loves us unconditionally.
Pastor Darren: Sometimes people ask me how I know.
Pastor Darren: Something from Scripture is true, and I love this passage for an answer to that question.
Pastor Darren: What I've learned by reading Scripture is we've been wrestling with this question of our worthiness for 5,000 years.
Pastor Darren: I've learned from reading Scripture that we were wrestling with this question for at least 2,000 years, from Jesus' time, and we are still wrestling with it today.
Pastor Darren: That is how I know it is true.
Pastor Darren: It is true about us.
Pastor Darren: It is true about our situation.
Pastor Darren: It is true about us.
Pastor Darren: It is true about our situation.
Pastor Darren: It is true about our relationship with God.
Pastor Darren: We wrestle with this question of our worthiness and what we need to do to be seen worthy in God's eyes.
Pastor Darren: Despite having teaching from Jesus that said God loves us unconditionally, having teaching from Jesus that said God loves us unconditionally.
Pastor Darren: To me, in this way, we can recognize the importance of our belief in grace.
Pastor Darren: In fact, it might even be essential.
Pastor Darren: I think the journey of faith, at least a piece of the journey of faith, can be marked from the transition in this statement.
Pastor Darren: We have to go from that place of God loves me because of this and this and this, to the more difficult side of the statement God loves me despite this and this and this.
Pastor Darren: To me, this is the core ingredient for being able to live a life of grace.
Pastor Darren: We can't love others unconditionally if we don't love ourselves unconditionally, or at least trust in God's unconditional love for us.
Pastor Darren: To me, this is what we see with Jean Valjean.
Pastor Darren: He spends the first part of his life in the most graceless state of our world Deep in poverty.
Pastor Darren: He steals bread for his niece and his nephew to live.
Pastor Darren: For this he's given a five-year sentence, extended to 19, for escaping an unfair sentence, a graceless existence.
Pastor Darren: His second stage starts from this act of grace the not the bishop not only forgives the stealing, but gives him what he needs to start over.
Pastor Darren: The bishop offered him grace.
Pastor Darren: The next moment of transition for Valjean is he's faced with this dilemma does he reveal himself to do the right thing in his justice?
Pastor Darren: The right and the wrong to do the right thing in his justice?
Pastor Darren: The right and the wrong to do the right thing, even though helping Fantine brings attention, even though he knows a full confession of who he is, will free that other man, but absolutely convict him.
Pastor Darren: But absolutely convict him To me, his response to these situations.
Pastor Darren: They are his statements of his belief in grace.
Pastor Darren: He had to trust that grace was real and that God would be with him as he moved into that earthly jeopardy that lay ahead for him.
Pastor Darren: I told you we were going to hear this song.
Pastor Darren: Who am I?
Pastor Darren: It's this song of declaration that he makes In getting that conviction off of the other man Mistaken to be him.
Pastor Darren: He yells out loud.
Pastor Darren: It's out loud.
Pastor Darren: It is me.
Pastor Darren: I am Jean Valjean.
Pastor Darren: My hope is that you not only hear that declaration but you might also hear the words God's love, god's unconditional love, is real.
Pastor Darren: I pray you hear that declaration.
Joseph Cowdrey: (singing " Who am I?
Joseph Cowdrey: Can I condemn this man to slavery?
Joseph Cowdrey: Pretend I do not see his agony, this innocent who wears my face, who goes to judgment in my place?
Joseph Cowdrey: Who am I?
Joseph Cowdrey: Can I conceal myself forevermore?
Joseph Cowdrey: Pretend I'm not the man I was before, and must my name, until I die, be no more than an alibi.
Joseph Cowdrey: Must I lie?
Joseph Cowdrey: How can I ever face my fellow man?
Joseph Cowdrey: How can I ever face myself again?
Joseph Cowdrey: My soul belongs to God.
Joseph Cowdrey: I know I made that bargain long ago.
Joseph Cowdrey: He gave me hope when hope was gone.
Joseph Cowdrey: He gave me strength to journey on.
Joseph Cowdrey: Who am I?
Joseph Cowdrey: I'm Jean Valjean, and so Javert.
Joseph Cowdrey: You see, it's true, this man bears no more guilt than you.
Joseph Cowdrey: Who am I?
Joseph Cowdrey: Two, four, six, oh one.
Joseph Cowdrey: Who am I?
Joseph Cowdrey: 24601!