Pastor Darren: Good to be with you today.
Pastor Darren: We are continuing in our Les Mis series, using the story of Les Mis but also some material from a study guide by Pastor Matt Rall.
Pastor Darren: He's one of our UM pastors down in Louisiana and he seems to do a really good job of just getting you thinking and throwing a lot out there so that you really get to wrestle with some stuff, which I appreciate.
Pastor Darren: That on the faith journey.
Pastor Darren: Last week we were focused on Jean Valjean and his journey with relying, believing in God's grace, that there was grace, there was unconditional love for him coming to that place where he would believe it and not only believe it but maybe even live it out.
Pastor Darren: This week we're going to engage with what is often seen as the opposite of grace, the opposite of mercy, and that being justice To me right off the bat.
Pastor Darren: I find it interesting that we often put these in contrast with each other, as if mercy isn't just, or even that justice isn't merciful in their own ways.
Pastor Darren: But maybe we will play with that a little bit later this morning.
Pastor Darren: So we're on Javert.
Pastor Darren: He is the antagonist of the story and, like Valjean, he's actually what we would perceive as being victimized a victim in this world just in the fact that he was born into poverty and, in fact, was raised in a brothel.
Pastor Darren: So he's in a place where he too could claim that life had been unfair and that he needed to overcome a lot of things in order to get past what life had offered him.
Pastor Darren: But his response is different than Val John's response.
Pastor Darren: His response is to become highly, highly, highly committed to justice, hardline justice.
Pastor Darren: What's the law?
Pastor Darren: Well, that's the law.
Pastor Darren: That is what we are going to be living out.
Pastor Darren: He becomes a prison guard, surprise, surprise, and he is responsible for guarding over the inmates that Valjean was with when he did his 19 years in prison, often the source of a lot of harsh treatment that the prisoners would receive that Valjean received.
Pastor Darren: And we find that the bulk of the story is and we find that the bulk of the story is well, he is obsessed with finding Valjean after Valjean finally escapes after the 19 years.
Pastor Darren: And when we say obsessed, we're talking about 1,000 pages of Obsessed, obsessed.
Pastor Darren: I don't know if you've read it, or you read it in high school which, by the way, I'm surprised how many people actually read it at some time in their lives and know the story, and I want you to know it doesn't make me intimidated at all.
Pastor Darren: I'm not bothered that I'm preaching on something you read and I didn't read.
Pastor Darren: I'll just find out.
Pastor Darren: Right, taylor, you read it.
Pastor Darren: No See, and we're English majors.
Pastor Darren: Maybe we should have been French majors.
Pastor Darren: We got away 1,400 pages.
Pastor Darren: I'd rather read some poetry, maybe I don't know.
Pastor Darren: Anyway, a thousand pages.
Pastor Darren: Years and years and years of hunting down Valjean, and it upsets him to that degree that his whole life is guided around finding this guy who had escaped.
Pastor Darren: And we're talking about these years.
Pastor Darren: So, as the story moves on, javert actually discovers Valjean later in life.
Pastor Darren: This is the point at which Valjean had actually made something of his life.
Pastor Darren: He escapes from prison and he's done so well.
Pastor Darren: He's actually the mayor of the town, very well thought of, seems to be doing a good job of being mayor.
Pastor Darren: But Javert finds out who he is and Valjean is forced to flee with Cassette, the young girl that he had taken on raising after her mother had died indirectly from some things that he, valjean himself had done.
Pastor Darren: But it's helpful for us to keep in mind at this point too that in this battle between Javert and Valjean, javert is really getting windows into who Valjean has become.
Pastor Darren: In fact, at one point Javert, disguised as a homeless person, receives coins from Valjean, who had the kindness to offer a homeless person some money.
Pastor Darren: So he even sees in these different situations that Valjean is actually in a different place.
Pastor Darren: Later they re-engage.
Pastor Darren: Javert is actually the receiver of Valjean's grace, something that Javert rarely gave to Valjean.
Pastor Darren: They end up in the revolutionary action.
Pastor Darren: Javert has been a spy on the revolutionary people's side.
Pastor Darren: He's been discovered.
Pastor Darren: Valjean takes on the role of being to taking out that spy, of actually killing Javert and instead lets him go, gives him this gift of grace, all the more significant with the fact that Javert and instead lets him go, gives him this gift of grace, all the more significant with the fact that Javert had been hunting him for years and years and years.
Pastor Darren: It really had made his life a hell and yet amidst that, valjean finds his way to be gracious and let him live.
Pastor Darren: But the climactic scene for this relationship is when Javert has opportunity to once again capture Valjean.
Pastor Darren: Valjean is rescuing Marius, who's been injured in the revolutionary activity, rescuing him because he knew Cosette, the child he had raised, was really romantically in love with Marius and wanted to rescue him for Cassette.
Pastor Darren: Even against his own heartfelt desires.
Pastor Darren: Javert finds him, has one more chance to bring him in and Valjean said I'm just going to keep walking, and went and rescued the young man.
Pastor Darren: Javert, somewhat inadvertently, had offered grace to Valjean.
Pastor Darren: His response to that is an inability to be able to live with himself, inability to live with himself because he had given up on his commitment to justice.
Pastor Darren: He is so mad at himself he ultimately throws himself in the river, saying we don't fully know why he does this.
Pastor Darren: Does he feel the need to punish himself because he's allowed mercy, not justice, to rule his life?
Pastor Darren: Is he awakened to all the pain that he had caused Valjean and others in their lives, committed to this justice as his only way to measure things?
Pastor Darren: Or did he just give up in this challenge of being able to navigate the balance between grace and justice and those ideals for life?
Pastor Darren: Now we get a picture of what it looks like to have a full commitment to the law, as Javert does, to somebody who's put all his reliance on the wisdom, the greater authority of truth, being law and justice.
Pastor Darren: It's a challenging place to be when we live in an imperfect world, an often broken world.
Pastor Darren: We look back at Valjean's initial situation.
Pastor Darren: What lands him in prison.
Pastor Darren: He's stealing bread to feed his starving niece and nephew.
Pastor Darren: This is what he serves, ultimately, 19 years for.
Pastor Darren: Even if we can agree which is a stretch that five years is an appropriate sentence for stealing a loaf of bread, we'd still have this reality of the context of it being stolen, this context in which his family was starving and he was stealing what we all might think is somewhat minimal.
Pastor Darren: There's a context there that needs to be in play in the way we live out the punishment.
Pastor Darren: But to simply carry out the law in the absence of any kind of mercy, well, it clearly wasn't merciful, it wasn't gracious and, I might argue, not even just the very thing that Javert is looking to live out.
Pastor Darren: Even if they had established that this was an appropriate punishment for stealing needed bread, to pretend that a blanket system of justice is going to work over an imperfect, often broken world is probably going to be a stretch, and Javert is our model for the difficulty in maintaining that full commitment to law without mercy.
Pastor Darren: We need to be fair to Javert.
Pastor Darren: His understanding is not without some theological grounding that he is holding on to.
Pastor Darren: He talks of men like Valjean as having fallen from grace.
Pastor Darren: They made a choice to abandon God with their acts.
Pastor Darren: Therefore, they are in some ways deserving of the punishment they're receiving.
Pastor Darren: He might even feel that there's mercy and that he's offering these strong boundaries, educating on what is appropriate, and he is fully committing to this theology.
Pastor Darren: He commits his time, his focus, his emotions and eventually his life To get this justice, this justice in regards to Valjean.
Pastor Darren: Meanwhile, we're starting to see the potential effects of grace on Valjean.
Pastor Darren: We're starting to see that Valjean is rising above his graceless state.
Pastor Darren: He is starting to be redeemed.
Pastor Darren: He's a good person and he shows this to Javert in multiple ways.
Pastor Darren: But for Javert this is of no consequence.
Pastor Darren: He made choices against God.
Pastor Darren: There is a punishment for that happening.
Pastor Darren: The only appropriate response is that he live out this plan of justice, this system of justice.
Pastor Darren: But if you're like me, you might be wondering when Javert might ever come to this sense of, to a sense of reason in this thing that he might listen and go, stole a loaf of bread and serving five on to 19 years for that.
Pastor Darren: Valjean appears to be reformed, but Javert is so clouded he is laser focused on the law, almost to the point, I would argue, to have made an idol, a human idol, of this thing called justice.
Pastor Darren: No room for mercy, for grace or really for God to do what God can do.
Pastor Darren: Ultimately, javert ends his life letting Valjean go, like I said, unable to accept that.
Pastor Darren: Well, he ends his life unable to accept that he has committed this horrible, horrible act of grace.
Pastor Darren: Can you imagine being so focused on some earthly definition of justice that you can't see the redeeming work of God that is happening in front of you?
Pastor Darren: What we learn, I think, from this story and I believe my colleague, pastor Matt would agree is that the journey of life is really about navigating between these both.
Pastor Darren: Life is really about navigating between these both.
Pastor Darren: We need to work at accepting and living out the grace that God is giving to us, just like Valjean, but we also need to manage our systems and ourselves to give space for redemption, to give space for grace.
Pastor Darren: It's something we might call mercy, an act that turned out to be too difficult for Javert.
Pastor Darren: There's another way to look at this, there are other words for this, and how often do we find ourselves in this spot where we over again, where we have to trust God and live things out in the best ways that we feel that we are able, humbled to what is the mystery of God's presence, often the mystery of God's grace.
Pastor Darren: How often do we land here, in this place, where the only answer we can find is trust, god, we want absolutes, don't we?
Pastor Darren: We want it a little easier, a little more straightforward.
Pastor Darren: Give us another ten commandments, god.
Pastor Darren: Those were pretty clear.
Pastor Darren: Not that we're good at following all of them, but they were commandments, god.
Pastor Darren: Those were pretty clear.
Pastor Darren: Not that we're good at following all of them, but they were clear.
Pastor Darren: God, we'll program them in.
Pastor Darren: We won't have to wrestle with these difficult questions anymore.
Pastor Darren: We want, these times, we want to yell out make it clear, god.
Pastor Darren: But when the answer is trust, live in faith.
Pastor Darren: We want more from God.
Pastor Darren: But when the answer is trust, live in faith.
Pastor Darren: We want more from God.
Pastor Darren: We want freedom, but not a lot of freedom To think, to believe.
Pastor Darren: We don't really want to hear that answer of faith, that answer of truth, because we want something more absolute.
Pastor Darren: We can yell to God in this context today Is it grace, is it mercy, or is it justice and law?
Pastor Darren: And you know what the answer is it comes back from God.
Pastor Darren: The answer is yes, it is mercy, grace, justice and law and we don't really like that.
Pastor Darren: Just tell me the answers, god, I'll take the test and I'll get an A.
Pastor Darren: I'll take the test and I'll get an A, only to learn that life really isn't a test like that.
Pastor Darren: Our scriptures today are designed to help us walk this journey, this journey of how we live out faith, faith, how we live out trust in God.
Pastor Darren: The first is from second Timothy, and the hope in the scripture itself is a.
Pastor Darren: Paul is trying to affirm Timothy.
Pastor Darren: He is a young protege, a young leader in the church and he's trying to build his confidence to a certain extent.
Pastor Darren: But his words to Timothy can speak to our challenge that we are wrestling with today here.
Pastor Darren: Verses 14 and 15 again.
Pastor Darren: But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how.
Pastor Darren: From childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
Pastor Darren: In other words, trust in what you've learned, trust in what you've read about our faith, in the tradition of our faith, trust in what you've experienced in life, trust that God gave you the brain that sits in your head Right, mostly Theologian, not a biology person.
Pastor Darren: We can trust that God gave us this mind to be able to reason out, balanced out with lots of different authorities, to be able to figure out some answers, figure out ways of moving forward.
Pastor Darren: Figure out ways of moving forward.
Pastor Darren: We've known about God's capacity for redemption.
Pastor Darren: We want to be able to live that out in our justice systems, both our personal justice systems and our community institutional justice systems.
Pastor Darren: We need to be able to trust the work that God can do, that grace can do, and give space for that.
Pastor Darren: Our second passage is from Matthew 22.
Pastor Darren: It goes like this you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
Pastor Darren: This is both comforting and a little frustrating.
Pastor Darren: I mentioned our human desires for absolutes comforting and a little frustrating.
Pastor Darren: I mentioned our human desires for absolutes, a Ten Commandments, a book of rules that we often would appreciate to solve some of these complexities.
Pastor Darren: But Jesus seems to bring it all back to faith, to trusting in God, loving God, loving neighbor.
Pastor Darren: It's really kind of a summary of the ten, isn't it?
Pastor Darren: The first half of those ten kind of have to deal with that relationship with God, the up and down, the vertical, me and God, getting it organized, and the second half of those ten commandments.
Pastor Darren: Aren't they a lot about living with each other, living in this world, loving God and loving neighbor.
Pastor Darren: Guideposts for us to navigate these complexities that are in front of us daily, the complexities of human systems like justice, and for the complexities of our human potential for redemption, especially through God's given grace.
Pastor Darren: We are encouraged to remember these guideposts and hopefully it might help you to remember it this way Love God, love neighbor.
Pastor Darren: If we can walk those two things, we are at least in God's spirit.
Pastor Darren: We might still make mistakes, but we're still in God's spirit, doing our best to be able to navigate those complexities, loving God and loving our neighbor, to navigate those complexities, loving God and loving our neighbor.
Pastor Darren: Javert was somebody who wrestled with this guidance.
Pastor Darren: I would argue like I said.
Pastor Darren: He makes an idol out of our justice system.
Pastor Darren: He makes it something that he allows to rule his life, guide every aspect of his decision making, and it comes at the expense of god's presence in the world, god's presence even in him.