WEBVTT 00:00:00.040 --> 00:00:05.322 We continue in our theme with Les Miserables and this one. 00:00:05.322 --> 00:00:12.769 The chapter in the book is called Building the Barricade and it's talking more specifically about the French resistance. 00:00:12.769 --> 00:00:18.672 That's kind of in the background of the whole story of Les Miserables. 00:00:18.672 --> 00:00:30.039 In the history of it all, this story is occurring after the French Revolution, but it's still a time of revolution. 00:00:30.039 --> 00:00:31.687 It's still a time of rebellion. 00:00:31.687 --> 00:00:33.927 They're still trying to figure everything out. 00:00:33.927 --> 00:00:51.969 They're wrestling over whether or not they want monarchy or if they're going to turn to something like a republic similar to our democratic understanding, representative government, in which people have some say in what happens and what gets decided. 00:00:51.969 --> 00:01:01.009 And undergirding a lot of that is this idea of human rights and treating humans respectfully. 00:01:01.009 --> 00:01:07.600 What has lingered in all this history is that you actually have two sides here. 00:01:07.600 --> 00:01:10.427 You have two camps, shall we say. 00:01:10.427 --> 00:01:34.766 There are loyalists who stick to this monarchy understanding of having a king and that being the best way to organize principles, having somebody in charge who makes all the decisions, and this other understanding, which they call a First Republic understanding, and those are people who are arguing for more of those human rights and much more of that respect. 00:01:34.766 --> 00:01:41.352 Our group, in the story of Les Miserables, the students are part of that rebellion. 00:01:41.352 --> 00:02:01.131 They're the ones who have that human right understanding, trying to have some power for people amidst other powers that can control things governments, corporations, institutions, those kinds of things and so they are aligning with the poor in Les Miserables. 00:02:01.131 --> 00:02:32.909 So this probably we should claim as a human issue to me and not just a French issue in the 1800s, because we seem always to be wrestling with that polarity between is it best to be treating our regular folks with some of that respect, some of that human dignity, or do we need to empower the corporations and other institutions that are growing society? 00:02:32.909 --> 00:02:40.187 We're always seen to be wrestling with that and whom we want to empower, and I imagine we always will be. 00:02:40.187 --> 00:02:56.366 But this, if you haven't understood so far, explains our barricade Because the students, as they were rebelling, put together a barricade, because they are the ones trying to rebel against the current government, the monarchy. 00:02:56.366 --> 00:03:08.104 And the barricade that they were able to create because they were regular folks like you and me, were things right from their homes, the chairs, the tables, the whatever was out there. 00:03:08.104 --> 00:03:17.871 And if you saw the movie, you saw them throwing them out the windows as they create this barricade to hold off the National Guard in this story. 00:03:17.871 --> 00:03:24.585 So that is the main conflict, that is the backdrop for the story itself. 00:03:25.567 --> 00:03:36.663 What it poses for us as Christians is this question about conflict, this question about disagreement. 00:03:36.663 --> 00:03:40.312 What do we do when we disagree with each other? 00:03:40.312 --> 00:03:44.183 What do we do when we're in conflict? 00:03:44.183 --> 00:03:50.365 Is there room for us Christians for rebellion, those of us called to love our enemies? 00:03:50.365 --> 00:03:52.870 Is there room for that rebellion? 00:03:52.870 --> 00:03:57.564 How do we do that rebellion in the most Christian way? 00:03:57.564 --> 00:04:09.102 So we look to our deep wisdom from our scriptures, 2,000-year-old wisdom coming from Jesus, the gospel of Matthew, chapter 5. 00:04:09.102 --> 00:04:32.161 We look to that deep, deep wisdom and if you were looking for some comfort, you will not find it here brings I'm sorry, you realize I was sick this week, yeah, my head's a little bit foggy. 00:04:32.161 --> 00:04:40.144 It brings with it potentially our most challenging instruction, yet no comfort here. 00:04:40.144 --> 00:04:45.110 Challenge Love your enemies. 00:04:46.781 --> 00:04:59.687 The summary of the passage kind of goes like this Basically, anyone can love the good ones, Loving those who love us, liking those who treat us well. 00:04:59.687 --> 00:05:01.026 That's the easy stuff. 00:05:01.026 --> 00:05:03.447 We can all do that. 00:05:03.447 --> 00:05:06.045 Even the tax collectors do that. 00:05:06.045 --> 00:05:09.862 For gosh sakes, do we have tax collectors in this church? 00:05:09.862 --> 00:05:12.790 Sometimes you got to be careful. 00:05:12.790 --> 00:05:14.213 I don't want to insult anybody. 00:05:14.213 --> 00:05:18.684 They weren't well thought of 2,000 years ago, not like today. 00:05:18.684 --> 00:05:37.790 I tell you, if you really want to try something difficult, if you really want to challenge yourself, try loving those who aren't good, who don't treat you well. 00:05:39.560 --> 00:05:45.165 I talk about being counterintuitive against all our human instincts. 00:05:45.165 --> 00:05:51.704 Loving those who don't treat us well cuts us off on the freeway. 00:05:51.704 --> 00:05:56.192 Love you, you're great. 00:05:56.192 --> 00:06:00.562 You're great over there Talking behind our back. 00:06:00.562 --> 00:06:02.723 I love you too. 00:06:02.723 --> 00:06:08.447 You're so good for the way you talk about me when I'm not around. 00:06:08.447 --> 00:06:16.694 Lays us off when they know we need the paycheck. 00:06:16.694 --> 00:06:19.596 Love you. 00:06:19.596 --> 00:06:34.129 Votes against your personal values and your rights. 00:06:34.129 --> 00:06:39.786 Love you. 00:06:39.786 --> 00:06:39.906 Right. 00:06:39.906 --> 00:06:41.632 It's challenging. 00:06:41.632 --> 00:06:51.187 It goes against so much of just our existence and how our body is inclined to move, how our mind is intended to go. 00:06:51.187 --> 00:06:51.822 And I'll tell you. 00:06:51.822 --> 00:07:04.291 The kicker comes here in the rest of the passage when he says For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 00:07:04.291 --> 00:07:09.310 In other words, god loves everyone. 00:07:09.310 --> 00:07:15.319 Why can't you love everyone? 00:07:15.319 --> 00:07:17.949 Are you ready? 00:07:17.988 --> 00:07:18.350 for that. 00:07:20.021 --> 00:07:36.744 Are you ready for that challenge and the added challenge that comes too when we start thinking about how do we love someone while seeking change of something that we see as wrong? 00:07:36.744 --> 00:07:41.639 Right now we see there's a social justice issue at stake. 00:07:41.639 --> 00:07:43.516 Something needs to be fixed. 00:07:43.516 --> 00:07:47.740 Somebody is not being treated in the way God would want them treated. 00:07:47.740 --> 00:07:49.110 We need to fix this thing. 00:07:49.110 --> 00:07:57.485 How do I do that against the people who I am enemies with and still love them? 00:07:57.485 --> 00:08:00.673 There's that huge challenge. 00:08:00.673 --> 00:08:13.132 Can we work against others while still loving them, others while still loving them? 00:08:13.132 --> 00:08:21.072 I would argue in our current political and social dialogue of today that we're seeing what it looks like when we choose not to love our enemies, that this is the reality we're living in now. 00:08:21.072 --> 00:08:28.084 We are not holding ourselves to that belief from God, that teaching from Jesus. 00:08:28.084 --> 00:08:46.477 So I wrestle with this and my head started turning to the other side of things and I enjoy talking to your all really good friend, charlie Pember, back here in let's see pew 12, seat 17. 00:08:46.477 --> 00:08:50.519 You can hunt him down and chat him up. 00:08:50.519 --> 00:09:06.542 He is a very good conversation and he asks a very good question now and again, right, and sometimes he even gives me some time to answer, to figure out what exactly what comes to my brain. 00:09:06.542 --> 00:09:12.875 I do remind him that some of these questions are big, big questions. 00:09:12.875 --> 00:09:15.759 But he asks this time in the series. 00:09:15.759 --> 00:09:27.561 He's been talking a lot about love, he's been talking a lot about grace, and the question is what do we do with love and grace when we're talking about the darkest of us? 00:09:27.561 --> 00:09:33.077 And you know folks, folks I'm talking about let's just take it right to number 10 here. 00:09:33.077 --> 00:09:44.620 You know those genocidal leaders, those dictators who don't seem to have any heart or compassion for humanity, much less their own people. 00:09:44.620 --> 00:09:46.349 You know who I'm talking about. 00:09:46.349 --> 00:09:52.110 How are we going to love those people? 00:09:52.110 --> 00:09:57.577 What do we do about loving the worst of us? 00:09:57.577 --> 00:10:01.523 It's a tough one, right? 00:10:01.523 --> 00:10:03.485 That is a tough question. 00:10:03.485 --> 00:10:05.514 I told Charlie. 00:10:05.514 --> 00:10:17.643 I said we've been wrestling with this question really since we've existed as a species, so I'm going to need a couple days, you know, to figure what my answer is. 00:10:17.643 --> 00:10:21.035 More than a few days. 00:10:21.035 --> 00:10:24.080 I hope you understand I wasn't being arrogant on that. 00:10:25.130 --> 00:10:28.260 It's a hard question to figure out. 00:10:28.260 --> 00:10:42.102 It's tough because we don't think God's asking us to lay down our arms right Just to hope that we aren't overrun or even worse. 00:10:42.102 --> 00:10:46.490 But we are called to love everyone, even our enemies. 00:10:46.490 --> 00:10:49.519 Where does this leave us? 00:10:49.519 --> 00:11:07.202 When is there a time that, with integrity, we can say to ourselves Jesus, this situation is different. 00:11:07.202 --> 00:11:09.072 This situation is different. 00:11:09.072 --> 00:11:14.318 I'm going to need to suspend the whole loving thing here. 00:11:14.318 --> 00:11:27.903 My experiential wisdom of living in this world lo, these, however many years has told me I need to suspend the loving thing here. 00:11:27.903 --> 00:11:37.418 It puts it into a different realm of understanding, doesn't it To think about it in that way? 00:11:37.418 --> 00:11:47.081 Now it's us deciding when we follow God's wisdom, when we follow Jesus' teaching and when we don't. 00:11:47.081 --> 00:11:52.230 We follow Jesus' teaching and when we don't. 00:11:52.230 --> 00:11:57.798 It's also tough, because that's not the end of those kinds of conversations. 00:11:57.798 --> 00:12:00.947 That's just the beginning of those kinds of conversations. 00:12:00.947 --> 00:12:20.423 Now we've put ourselves in a position where we have to establish this boundary for when we believe God's wisdom applies and when God's wisdom doesn't apply, when love is the proper response and when love isn't the proper response. 00:12:20.423 --> 00:12:39.303 How long does it take before that part of the process, that decision about whether to follow godly wisdom or not, is part of every single conflict, every single decision that we are making. 00:12:41.971 --> 00:12:44.515 I've heard my Christians and brothers and sisters. 00:12:44.515 --> 00:12:51.918 They'll say things like you know what that guy if he wanted to work, he'd be working. 00:12:51.918 --> 00:12:53.878 I don't owe him anything. 00:12:53.878 --> 00:13:10.081 And I've heard other Christians, brothers and sisters say that guy right there wouldn't give a single thing to another child of God to make sure he had what he needed. 00:13:10.081 --> 00:13:12.979 I don't owe him anything. 00:13:12.979 --> 00:13:32.138 I've heard Christians and brothers and sisters say, oh, they are affirming of LGBTQ people, lgbtq lifestyles, we owe them nothing. 00:13:32.138 --> 00:13:44.417 And I've heard other Christian brothers and sisters say they are oppressing LGBTQ people in this world. 00:13:44.417 --> 00:13:47.813 I owe them nothing. 00:13:47.813 --> 00:13:58.293 I trust that you have heard those same statements from our Christian brothers and sisters. 00:13:58.673 --> 00:14:09.245 Clearly, we are allowing ourselves a certain amount of latitude today, latitude on this issue of following this mandate to love our enemies. 00:14:09.245 --> 00:14:16.111 In many ways, we empower ourselves to live out of this godly love daily. 00:14:16.111 --> 00:14:20.004 This godly love daily. 00:14:20.004 --> 00:14:24.514 Where are the new boundaries to adhere to in this beyond Jesus world? 00:14:24.514 --> 00:14:30.897 If you're like me, it starts getting a bit murky. 00:14:30.897 --> 00:14:40.113 The more liberties we take, the more we venture away from that grounding understanding, the murkier it gets. 00:14:40.113 --> 00:14:45.035 It is a tough calling for us Christians for sure. 00:14:45.035 --> 00:14:53.676 Loving enemies amidst inevitable disagreement and even conflict in this world. 00:14:53.676 --> 00:15:10.538 It is a difficult challenge and in this world which, for my eye, seems to be increasingly less moralizing, in the sense that we're trying to live out what is right and wrong. 00:15:10.538 --> 00:15:13.495 To understand what is right and wrong and to live it out. 00:15:13.495 --> 00:15:19.114 We have other meters, money and power that tend to make those decisions. 00:15:19.114 --> 00:15:31.100 Maybe our call, our call as Christians, is to continue to make the loving option our option. 00:15:31.100 --> 00:15:47.578 Maybe our calling is to make sure, in a world that clearly isn't always leaning in that direction, that at least that voice is getting spoken, at least Jesus' teaching is in the room and being defended. 00:15:49.485 --> 00:15:50.506 I mean loving action. 00:15:50.506 --> 00:15:54.758 It's an essential part of a life lived well. 00:15:54.758 --> 00:15:59.077 It's an essential part of knowing God's abundance. 00:15:59.077 --> 00:16:00.282 We've learned this. 00:16:00.282 --> 00:16:05.933 That's why we're here on Sunday mornings at 10 o'clock, some of you even every week. 00:16:05.933 --> 00:16:18.876 He teases and we know there's value to living the godly life, the loving life. 00:16:18.876 --> 00:16:21.201 That is why we are here. 00:16:21.201 --> 00:16:29.839 It's also a mindset that has brought about social justice on a very, very large scale. 00:16:29.839 --> 00:16:35.811 Gandhi was able to bring a sense of humanity to India. 00:16:35.811 --> 00:16:43.961 Martin Luther King helped deconstruct socially acceptable racism in the United States. 00:16:46.326 --> 00:16:51.418 We are following a man who lived 2,000 years ago. 00:16:51.418 --> 00:16:56.697 The work he did was 2,000 years ago and yet we still follow. 00:16:56.697 --> 00:17:05.955 Love definitely still has some success stories, crucifixion has brought resurrection. 00:17:05.955 --> 00:17:13.978 So maybe we aren't just wasting our time living out this loving thing. 00:17:13.978 --> 00:17:22.434 We should also remember that the alternative has its cost, has its price too. 00:17:23.817 --> 00:17:26.488 I'll remind you of the, the story in les mis. 00:17:26.488 --> 00:17:41.019 The story leading to this battle is the culmination in the story of the battle of the those rebelling, those students who are rebelling, and the National Guard coming in and just conquering them. 00:17:41.019 --> 00:17:51.352 And you might remember in the story that Jean Valjean rescues Marius, who was in the battle, gets fatally well, I shouldn't say fatally injured. 00:17:51.352 --> 00:18:00.454 He could have died from his injuries until Jean Valjean rescues him, takes him to where he can heal, to where he can get better. 00:18:00.525 --> 00:18:29.576 But in that moment, where he wasn't sure if Marius was going to live, if he was going to be killed in this battle, this conflict in which humanity couldn't figure out how to live together, he speaks with deep, deep love, in a plea to God to let Marius live, to let Marius continue to live despite the conflict, despite our inability as humans to be able to get along. 00:18:29.576 --> 00:18:34.074 I'm going to invite Billy Parrish to come forward. 00:18:34.074 --> 00:18:39.393 He's going to be singing one of the most well-known songs from Les Mis Bring Him Home. 00:18:39.393 --> 00:18:52.482 And I invite you to listen for that plea, a plea to God to let Marius not be a victim to a world who couldn't figure out how to love each other. 00:19:09.813 --> 00:19:20.719 God on high, hear my prayer. 00:19:20.719 --> 00:19:32.875 In my need you have always been there. 00:19:32.875 --> 00:19:45.358 He is young, he is afraid. 00:19:45.358 --> 00:19:58.173 Let him rest, heaven blessed. 00:19:58.173 --> 00:20:06.666 Bring him home, bring him home. 00:20:06.666 --> 00:20:11.071 Bring him home. 00:20:11.071 --> 00:20:14.615 Bring him home. 00:20:14.615 --> 00:20:20.369 He's like the sun. 00:20:20.369 --> 00:20:27.472 I might have known If God had granted me a son. 00:20:27.472 --> 00:20:45.342 The summers die one by one, how soon they fly on and on and I am old and will be gone. 00:20:45.342 --> 00:21:02.109 Bring him, bring him peace, bring him joy. 00:21:02.109 --> 00:21:14.624 He is young, he is only a boy. 00:21:14.624 --> 00:21:15.545 Let him be. 00:21:15.545 --> 00:21:38.992 Let him live. 00:21:38.992 --> 00:21:48.719 If I die, let me die. 00:21:48.719 --> 00:21:56.098 Let him live. 00:21:56.098 --> 00:22:05.999 Bring him home, bring him home. 00:22:05.999 --> 00:22:13.541 Bring him home. 00:22:13.541 --> 00:22:14.561 Thank you.