March 9, 2025 • 25 mins
Grace transforms even the most broken souls, but only if we dare to believe we're worthy of it. This powerful truth emerges as we begin our Lenten journey through Victor Hugo's masterpiece, Les Misérables, examining how theological concepts manifest in this beloved narrative.
Jean Valjean's story captivates us from his first appearance—a man imprisoned nineteen years for stealing bread to feed starving children. His graceless existence changes forever when a bishop not only forgives his theft but gifts him valuable candlesticks, offering redemption when punishment seemed more fitting. This unexpected grace becomes the catalyst for Valjean's transformation, mirroring how divine love operates in our own lives.
The heart of our exploration centers on Paul's profound teaching to the Ephesians: "saved by grace through faith." These seemingly simple words contain life-changing power. Why must grace come through faith? Because unconditional love remains merely theoretical until we believe it applies to us. We often struggle not with whether God can love everyone, but whether God can truly love us despite knowing our deepest flaws. As Valjean faces his moment of truth—choosing to reveal his identity to save an innocent man—we witness the declaration that grace is real and worth risking everything for.
The most challenging spiritual journey isn't believing God loves others unconditionally; it's believing God loves us that way. When Valjean sings "Who am I?", he confronts the question we all must answer. Can we move from "God loves me because of this" to "God loves me despite this"? This Lenten season, join us in discovering how Les Misérables illuminates our path to accepting the grace that seems too good to be true, yet remains our greatest hope.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Pastor Darren (00:00):
Well, like I said , we are starting our Lenten
journey.
You know, I found thiscurriculum, this material, in
Cokesbury, our United Methodistpublishing house, and I looked
at it and I went oh, this isgoing to be exciting, I really
want to do this.
Well.
So I went to Gloria and I said,Gloria, I really like this,
(00:23):
right, so I want to do it.
But if we can't do it well thisyear, I want to save it.
And she said we're due forsomething new and creative.
So here we are.
Are you liking new and creative?
At least half an hour in.
I hope you're enjoying it as westart this Lenten journey and
(00:48):
it should be fun.
So the material we're workingfrom is this author Matt Rall.
He's a pastor over in Louisiana, one of our own pastors.
He wrote this book called theGrace of Les Miserables and it's
built around the original storyby a man named Victor Hugo in
France.
(01:08):
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 abackdrop of French turmoil and
and revolution happening in the1800s.
(01:28):
And you'll remember from yourhistory class, or maybe I'll be
reminding you, that a lot of ourown democratic ideals and
understandings.
We, you know we became thedemocratic experiment here as a
new nation after our ownrevolution.
Those ideas, that thinking, wasoriginating in France.
(01:49):
In fact a lot of our foundingfathers went over there to learn
about democracy as they werefiguring out how they were going
to implement it.
So the backdrop we have here.
We can remember that the Frenchwere looking at what had
happened here and now trying toapply a lot of the thinking that
they had originated in theirown country.
(02:10):
And what you might alsoremember is that it was a really
big stage show.
It continues to be a big stageshow Late 80s, into the 90s and
on continuing with some reallypowerful music that people have
really enjoyed.
And in fact we watched.
What they did was filming alive version of the stage show
(02:34):
last week and had a really goodtime with it.
So that gives you a little bitof the backdrop of the story
that we're going to be workingwith for six weeks and for today
.
Each week we kind of delve intoa character.
Today we delve into the maincharacter, jean Valjean.
He is, like I say, the maincharacter.
(02:57):
The story, at least in thisstage version, opens with him
doing really hard, hard labor inprison.
He had been arrested andconvicted for stealing bread for
his niece and his nephew whowere going hungry.
The sentence for stealing breadfor his hungry niece and nephew
(03:19):
five years.
But he had served 19 because hekept trying to escape.
So finally he escapes one moretime and after the escape he
ends up in this church.
He is stealing from the church.
He gets caught and what happens?
But the bishop forgives him,tells the police that are there,
(03:43):
that no, it was a mistake, andin fact gives him two
candlesticks of a certain amountof value I don't know, maybe
like these right here and letsthem take them to to start
something new in his life.
So he goes, he makes his way inthe world and stage version,
(04:05):
movie version we catch up withhim many years later.
He turns out to be quitesuccessful.
He is a man of certain wealth,he's owning factories and is
even the mayor.
But all the while he is beingpursued by Inspector Javert.
He is being pursued byInspector Javert.
(04:26):
Inspector Javert is somebodywho's obsessed with justice.
If this was your sentence, youneed to live out your sentence.
You did wrong.
You need to pay the price.
Valjean had assumed a differentidentity so he had been able to
live kind of in the public, butwithout being caught or seen by
Javert, understood to be who hereally was.
(04:47):
But that threat livesthroughout the whole story
because Valjean is always inthis place of being exposed to
be who he was, this person whohad escaped jail, escaped his
pen, his punishment.
The complication really startscoming to a head when he learns
(05:08):
of this young woman, Fantine.
Fantine had a baby, didn't havethe money to be able to provide
for the baby, left it with thisother innkeeper couple and was
now trying to work and workingin one of Valjean's factories.
The workers in the factory,along with the guy leading the
(05:30):
factory, really mistreat her fordifferent reasons.
She ends up losing the job,ends up having to live on the
streets doing sex work, donatingher hair, donating her teeth.
She really is this example ofsomebody completely victimized
by the world around her.
(05:52):
And in the midst of that Valjeanis convicted.
He has conflict in his ownheart because he knows helping
Fantine brings attention to himand his possible being revealed
for who he was.
But then it even gets astronger concern complication,
because they arrest and areabout to convict a man for being
(06:17):
Jean Valjean when he knows he'sJean Valjean.
In other words, somebody elseis going to serve his punishment
for him, and so, just as Javerthas his sense of justice,
valjean's got his own sense ofjustice.
Can I let somebody pay theprice for my actions, especially
(06:38):
given that my revealing myselfmight lead me into being
punished?
You know, having to live outthat crime, a punishment for a
crime.
That was iffy to start.
Well, he does stand up andclaim who he is, and in the
(06:59):
Broadway version it is with apowerful song that you're going
to hear this morning, so I hopeyou're excited about that.
He avoids being arrested,though, and hides out in the
church again, manages to raiseFantine daughter, Cosette, and
his story arc kind of culminateswith his unconditional love
(07:21):
saving Cosette romantic lovelife partner at great risk to
himself, an amazing sacrifice.
His story arc finishes withthose two people recognizing it
was him who had made thesacrifice to save Marius Cosette
love, and so he gets theblessing of being able to be
(07:43):
understood as the person who hadloved that deeply, that
unconditionally, and for usreading the story, especially us
Christians, we would say helearned grace, the value of
grace.
We need an intermission.
(08:05):
I'm sorry to do so much summarylike that, but it's first week
and y'all need to know the storyfor it all to make sense.
But hopefully you'reunderstanding too this
theological concept of grace.
God's unconditional love isreally at the center of all of
this.
We're pretty good atunderstanding in our heads what
(08:30):
that word means.
I have a relatively goodrelationship with my spouse,
with my kids.
I know what it means to liveunconditionally, to live
unconditionally.
And yet, as for claiming it asa life philosophy, a way about
(08:55):
living your day-to-day not justwith those closest to you, not
just to those you consider to begood, but with everybody.
Grace for all God's children,we might wrestle with that a
little bit.
Unconditional love, that's goodfor God, all right, I don't
(09:16):
know if I can pull it off.
That's a little morecomplicated.
This is where I turn to ourpassage for today, paul's letter
to the Ephesians, the people inEphesus, paul's letter.
It's really to this community,this new church, Christian
(09:39):
community.
And remember, christianity isjust kind of getting off the
ground, especially in this sortof organized way.
It kind of was just a movementwhen Jesus was around.
Now they're trying to formalizeit, create these communities,
so these teachings that Paul'sdoing in these letters.
They are foundational teachings, right?
(10:02):
In many ways, some people feellike Paul actually is the one
who birthed the church, becausehe's the one who did that work
to help us understand how wewere going to live together, how
we were going to be churchtogether, how we were going to
live out what Jesus taught usabout life together.
So important, importanttheological lessons.
So this particular lesson I cansummarize in one, phraseed by
(10:29):
grace through faith, saved bygrace through faith.
Big words, am I right?
Saved, that's a big word whenwe're talking about that as part
of our condition.
Saved, what am I being savedfrom?
(10:51):
I didn't choose to be born.
Why did I need to be saved inthis place?
What do you mean by saved Grace, a concept we already sort of
wrestle with Right Going to bewrestling with it this morning
even more.
And then faith, grace throughfaith.
(11:15):
If grace is unconditional love,then where's faith come?
Do I need to have faith inorder to get grace?
Are you telling me that Godwon't love me until I have faith
Because that's a condition,isn't it?
It's a massive theologicalstatement that he makes in just
(11:40):
this short, short way.
Good questions for us to wrestlewith.
I think?
Do you like to wrestle withquestions?
Questions for us to wrestlewith, I think.
Do you like to wrestle withquestions?
Ooh, y'all might be in thewrong church, because I love
this stuff If you want it easy,I don't know what you got to do
(12:04):
here.
So why do we have troubleaccepting God's grace, right?
Isn't this Valjean's kind ofthing?
He has trouble.
He lived in such a horribleexistence, a graceless existence
, and then grace comes to him,but he doesn't trust it.
He wrestles with it.
We wrestle with this idea ofunconditional love, which is
sort of weird when you thinkabout it, because who wouldn't
(12:28):
want unconditional love?
Right, we're going to take thatif it's offered to us.
With the story of Valjean,maybe we can understand why he
would mistrust grace, comingfrom such a graceless experience
(12:48):
.
But it does make me wonder whywe might wrestle with grace.
Most of us have done okay inlife Ups, downs, maybe more ups
than downs.
We have at least as much reasonto trust the world, to trust
(13:09):
God, to trust the people in thisworld, as we do to mistrust all
of those.
So why do we often wrestle withgrace being true, being real,
being meaningful?
Is it because we have troubleliving it?
(13:37):
Is it because we havedifficulty offering grace to
everyone?
God can do it, but I'm not sureI can pull it off.
I mean that cynicism would behard to argue with.
Some people are really bad inour world, really broken in our
(13:59):
world.
I remember a pastor joke I gotyou heard of dad jokes.
I'll give you the pastor jokefor today.
Man gets out of his car afterhaving an accident.
He's very frustrated, he's veryangry.
He goes to the other driver andhe says why can't people learn
(14:22):
how to drive?
You're the fourth car I've hittoday.
Some people are broken and hurt, not in a good place, and we've
been hurt by these folks.
It can be difficult to offergrace to all and yet I wonder if
(14:48):
our difficulty with grace, ourdifficulty in truly believing in
grace, is something else.
We have another reason todistrust God.
When we think of grace and wethink about loving everyone, we
often envision the worst of us.
Right, and I turn to the choirwhen I say it.
(15:10):
We often envision there's areason, they're behind a wall.
I'm just teasing, but we do.
We think of the worst of us.
You know, we're going to testthe theory Love everybody.
Well, we don't think about theones we love first, we think
about the ones we don't love somuch.
(15:32):
And we go and we try to testthis theory of grace.
Would this really work?
Can I really love everyone?
And then we go and we startmaking up some sort of rubric to
figure it out.
All right, this sin, right here, is a five, this one's a two,
this one's a 37.
So you're getting these people,maybe?
Oh, but you're and we're.
(15:53):
I'm going to need a spreadsheetto figure out what really
qualifies.
And we're able to get around,see, and we're laughing a little
bit, but you engineers outthere, you've tried to do that,
haven't you?
I know engineers, you've triedto figure it all out.
And we end up in this placewhere we're trying to create
(16:15):
this system.
But we also have to recognizethat by loving everyone, it
means all the people, even thegood ones.
And have we ever really askedourselves is anyone really all
good?
Where are the lines?
(16:36):
Who gets to make the lines?
What are the people that we arewilling to offer grace to?
The ones we're willing to love,and where's that line to where
we don't need to, to the oneswe're willing to love, and
where's that line to where wedon't need to?
To me, it's even a slipperyslope to go to the next stage
(17:02):
when we say how can God?
love everyone.
How long does it take for thatquestion to lead us to the
mirror?
Is it possible?
What we're really saying is howcan God really love me
(17:29):
unconditionally?
You know we are our biggestcritics.
We are our biggest critics.
We are our own biggest critics.
And you know why?
Because we know what we'vegotten away with, am I right?
We know what we've gotten awaywith.
We know what we continue to getaway with the bigger things,
(17:51):
the not so big things.
Only we know how imperfect wecan be, how imperfect we truly
are.
Is it possible that when weconsider the possibility of the
reality of God's grace and beingable to live God's
unconditional love for us andfor everyone, that we aren't
(18:14):
always sure that we believe itabout ourselves?
We're not sure that we arefully worthy of unconditional
love?
To me, this is why Paul's wordsin Ephesians are so powerful,
so important.
(18:35):
Look at what it says Saved bygrace through faith.
Why does our unconditional love, god's grace, have to come
through faith?
Because you have to believe itfor it to be real.
If we want it to be real in ourheart and real in our lives,
(19:02):
then we're going to have tobelieve that it is true.
We're going to have to believethat God loves us
unconditionally.
Sometimes people ask me how Iknow.
Something from Scripture istrue, and I love this passage
for an answer to that question.
What I've learned by readingScripture is we've been
(19:24):
wrestling with this question ofour worthiness for 5,000 years.
I've learned from readingScripture that we were wrestling
with this question for at least2,000 years, from Jesus' time,
and we are still wrestling withit today.
(19:48):
That is how I know it is true.
It is true about us.
It is true about our situation.
It is true about us.
It is true about our situation.
It is true about ourrelationship with God.
We wrestle with this questionof our worthiness and what we
need to do to be seen worthy inGod's eyes.
(20:10):
Despite having teaching fromJesus that said God loves us
unconditionally, having teachingfrom Jesus that said God loves
us unconditionally.
To me, in this way, we canrecognize the importance of our
belief in grace.
In fact, it might even beessential.
(20:33):
I think the journey of faith,at least a piece of the journey
of faith, can be marked from thetransition in this statement.
We have to go from that placeof God loves me because of this
and this and this, to the moredifficult side of the statement
(20:53):
God loves me despite this andthis and this.
To me, this is the coreingredient for being able to
live a life of grace.
We can't love othersunconditionally if we don't love
(21:16):
ourselves unconditionally, orat least trust in God's
unconditional love for us.
To me, this is what we see withJean Valjean.
He spends the first part of hislife in the most graceless
state of our world Deep inpoverty.
He steals bread for his nieceand his nephew to live.
(21:40):
For this he's given a five-yearsentence, extended to 19, for
escaping an unfair sentence, agraceless existence.
His second stage starts fromthis act of grace the not the
bishop not only forgives thestealing, but gives him what he
(22:02):
needs to start over.
The bishop offered him grace.
The next moment of transitionfor Valjean is he's faced with
this dilemma does he revealhimself to do the right thing in
his justice?
The right and the wrong to dothe right thing in his justice?
The right and the wrong to dothe right thing, even though
helping Fantine brings attention, even though he knows a full
(22:27):
confession of who he is, willfree that other man, but
absolutely convict him.
But absolutely convict him Tome, his response to these
situations.
They are his statements of hisbelief in grace.
He had to trust that grace wasreal and that God would be with
(22:48):
him as he moved into thatearthly jeopardy that lay ahead
for him.
I told you we were going tohear this song.
Who am I?
It's this song of declarationthat he makes In getting that
conviction off of the other manMistaken to be him.
(23:11):
He yells out loud.
It's out loud.
It is me.
I am Jean Valjean.
My hope is that you not onlyhear that declaration but you
might also hear the words God'slove, god's unconditional love,
(23:36):
is real.
I pray you hear thatdeclaration.
Joseph Cowdrey (23:54):
(singing " Who am I?
Can I condemn this man toslavery?
Pretend I do not see his agony,this innocent who wears my face,
who goes to judgment in myplace?
Who am I?
Can I conceal myselfforevermore?
Pretend I'm not the man I wasbefore, and must my name, until
(24:19):
I die, be no more than an alibi.
Pretend I'm not the man I wasbefore, and must my name, until
I die, be no more than an alibi.
Must I lie?
How can I ever face my fellowman?
How can I ever face myselfagain?
My soul belongs to God.
I know I made that bargain longago.
He gave me hope when hope wasgone.
He gave me strength to journeyon.
(24:44):
Who am I?
Who am I?
I'm Jean Valjean, and so Javert.
(25:05):
You see, it's true, this manbears no more guilt than you.
Who am I?
Two, four, six, oh one.
Who am I?
24601!
Well, like I said , we are starting our Lenten
journey.
You know, I found thiscurriculum, this material, in
Cokesbury, our United Methodistpublishing house, and I looked
at it and I went oh, this isgoing to be exciting, I really
want to do this.
Well.
So I went to Gloria and I said,Gloria, I really like this,
(00:23):
right, so I want to do it.
But if we can't do it well thisyear, I want to save it.
And she said we're due forsomething new and creative.
So here we are.
Are you liking new and creative?
At least half an hour in.
I hope you're enjoying it as westart this Lenten journey and
(00:48):
it should be fun.
So the material we're workingfrom is this author Matt Rall.
He's a pastor over in Louisiana, one of our own pastors.
He wrote this book called theGrace of Les Miserables and it's
built around the original storyby a man named Victor Hugo in
France.
(01:08):
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 abackdrop of French turmoil and
and revolution happening in the1800s.
(01:28):
And you'll remember from yourhistory class, or maybe I'll be
reminding you, that a lot of ourown democratic ideals and
understandings.
We, you know we became thedemocratic experiment here as a
new nation after our ownrevolution.
Those ideas, that thinking, wasoriginating in France.
(01:49):
In fact a lot of our foundingfathers went over there to learn
about democracy as they werefiguring out how they were going
to implement it.
So the backdrop we have here.
We can remember that the Frenchwere looking at what had
happened here and now trying toapply a lot of the thinking that
they had originated in theirown country.
(02:10):
And what you might alsoremember is that it was a really
big stage show.
It continues to be a big stageshow Late 80s, into the 90s and
on continuing with some reallypowerful music that people have
really enjoyed.
And in fact we watched.
What they did was filming alive version of the stage show
(02:34):
last week and had a really goodtime with it.
So that gives you a little bitof the backdrop of the story
that we're going to be workingwith for six weeks and for today
.
Each week we kind of delve intoa character.
Today we delve into the maincharacter, jean Valjean.
He is, like I say, the maincharacter.
(02:57):
The story, at least in thisstage version, opens with him
doing really hard, hard labor inprison.
He had been arrested andconvicted for stealing bread for
his niece and his nephew whowere going hungry.
The sentence for stealing breadfor his hungry niece and nephew
(03:19):
five years.
But he had served 19 because hekept trying to escape.
So finally he escapes one moretime and after the escape he
ends up in this church.
He is stealing from the church.
He gets caught and what happens?
But the bishop forgives him,tells the police that are there,
(03:43):
that no, it was a mistake, andin fact gives him two
candlesticks of a certain amountof value I don't know, maybe
like these right here and letsthem take them to to start
something new in his life.
So he goes, he makes his way inthe world and stage version,
(04:05):
movie version we catch up withhim many years later.
He turns out to be quitesuccessful.
He is a man of certain wealth,he's owning factories and is
even the mayor.
But all the while he is beingpursued by Inspector Javert.
He is being pursued byInspector Javert.
(04:26):
Inspector Javert is somebodywho's obsessed with justice.
If this was your sentence, youneed to live out your sentence.
You did wrong.
You need to pay the price.
Valjean had assumed a differentidentity so he had been able to
live kind of in the public, butwithout being caught or seen by
Javert, understood to be who hereally was.
(04:47):
But that threat livesthroughout the whole story
because Valjean is always inthis place of being exposed to
be who he was, this person whohad escaped jail, escaped his
pen, his punishment.
The complication really startscoming to a head when he learns
(05:08):
of this young woman, Fantine.
Fantine had a baby, didn't havethe money to be able to provide
for the baby, left it with thisother innkeeper couple and was
now trying to work and workingin one of Valjean's factories.
The workers in the factory,along with the guy leading the
(05:30):
factory, really mistreat her fordifferent reasons.
She ends up losing the job,ends up having to live on the
streets doing sex work, donatingher hair, donating her teeth.
She really is this example ofsomebody completely victimized
by the world around her.
(05:52):
And in the midst of that Valjeanis convicted.
He has conflict in his ownheart because he knows helping
Fantine brings attention to himand his possible being revealed
for who he was.
But then it even gets astronger concern complication,
because they arrest and areabout to convict a man for being
(06:17):
Jean Valjean when he knows he'sJean Valjean.
In other words, somebody elseis going to serve his punishment
for him, and so, just as Javerthas his sense of justice,
valjean's got his own sense ofjustice.
Can I let somebody pay theprice for my actions, especially
(06:38):
given that my revealing myselfmight lead me into being
punished?
You know, having to live outthat crime, a punishment for a
crime.
That was iffy to start.
Well, he does stand up andclaim who he is, and in the
(06:59):
Broadway version it is with apowerful song that you're going
to hear this morning, so I hopeyou're excited about that.
He avoids being arrested,though, and hides out in the
church again, manages to raiseFantine daughter, Cosette, and
his story arc kind of culminateswith his unconditional love
(07:21):
saving Cosette romantic lovelife partner at great risk to
himself, an amazing sacrifice.
His story arc finishes withthose two people recognizing it
was him who had made thesacrifice to save Marius Cosette
love, and so he gets theblessing of being able to be
(07:43):
understood as the person who hadloved that deeply, that
unconditionally, and for usreading the story, especially us
Christians, we would say helearned grace, the value of
grace.
We need an intermission.
(08:05):
I'm sorry to do so much summarylike that, but it's first week
and y'all need to know the storyfor it all to make sense.
But hopefully you'reunderstanding too this
theological concept of grace.
God's unconditional love isreally at the center of all of
this.
We're pretty good atunderstanding in our heads what
(08:30):
that word means.
I have a relatively goodrelationship with my spouse,
with my kids.
I know what it means to liveunconditionally, to live
unconditionally.
And yet, as for claiming it asa life philosophy, a way about
(08:55):
living your day-to-day not justwith those closest to you, not
just to those you consider to begood, but with everybody.
Grace for all God's children,we might wrestle with that a
little bit.
Unconditional love, that's goodfor God, all right, I don't
(09:16):
know if I can pull it off.
That's a little morecomplicated.
This is where I turn to ourpassage for today, paul's letter
to the Ephesians, the people inEphesus, paul's letter.
It's really to this community,this new church, Christian
(09:39):
community.
And remember, christianity isjust kind of getting off the
ground, especially in this sortof organized way.
It kind of was just a movementwhen Jesus was around.
Now they're trying to formalizeit, create these communities,
so these teachings that Paul'sdoing in these letters.
They are foundational teachings, right?
(10:02):
In many ways, some people feellike Paul actually is the one
who birthed the church, becausehe's the one who did that work
to help us understand how wewere going to live together, how
we were going to be churchtogether, how we were going to
live out what Jesus taught usabout life together.
So important, importanttheological lessons.
So this particular lesson I cansummarize in one, phraseed by
(10:29):
grace through faith, saved bygrace through faith.
Big words, am I right?
Saved, that's a big word whenwe're talking about that as part
of our condition.
Saved, what am I being savedfrom?
(10:51):
I didn't choose to be born.
Why did I need to be saved inthis place?
What do you mean by saved Grace, a concept we already sort of
wrestle with Right Going to bewrestling with it this morning
even more.
And then faith, grace throughfaith.
(11:15):
If grace is unconditional love,then where's faith come?
Do I need to have faith inorder to get grace?
Are you telling me that Godwon't love me until I have faith
Because that's a condition,isn't it?
It's a massive theologicalstatement that he makes in just
(11:40):
this short, short way.
Good questions for us to wrestlewith.
I think?
Do you like to wrestle withquestions?
Questions for us to wrestlewith, I think.
Do you like to wrestle withquestions?
Ooh, y'all might be in thewrong church, because I love
this stuff If you want it easy,I don't know what you got to do
(12:04):
here.
So why do we have troubleaccepting God's grace, right?
Isn't this Valjean's kind ofthing?
He has trouble.
He lived in such a horribleexistence, a graceless existence
, and then grace comes to him,but he doesn't trust it.
He wrestles with it.
We wrestle with this idea ofunconditional love, which is
sort of weird when you thinkabout it, because who wouldn't
(12:28):
want unconditional love?
Right, we're going to take thatif it's offered to us.
With the story of Valjean,maybe we can understand why he
would mistrust grace, comingfrom such a graceless experience
(12:48):
.
But it does make me wonder whywe might wrestle with grace.
Most of us have done okay inlife Ups, downs, maybe more ups
than downs.
We have at least as much reasonto trust the world, to trust
(13:09):
God, to trust the people in thisworld, as we do to mistrust all
of those.
So why do we often wrestle withgrace being true, being real,
being meaningful?
Is it because we have troubleliving it?
(13:37):
Is it because we havedifficulty offering grace to
everyone?
God can do it, but I'm not sureI can pull it off.
I mean that cynicism would behard to argue with.
Some people are really bad inour world, really broken in our
(13:59):
world.
I remember a pastor joke I gotyou heard of dad jokes.
I'll give you the pastor jokefor today.
Man gets out of his car afterhaving an accident.
He's very frustrated, he's veryangry.
He goes to the other driver andhe says why can't people learn
(14:22):
how to drive?
You're the fourth car I've hittoday.
Some people are broken and hurt, not in a good place, and we've
been hurt by these folks.
It can be difficult to offergrace to all and yet I wonder if
(14:48):
our difficulty with grace, ourdifficulty in truly believing in
grace, is something else.
We have another reason todistrust God.
When we think of grace and wethink about loving everyone, we
often envision the worst of us.
Right, and I turn to the choirwhen I say it.
(15:10):
We often envision there's areason, they're behind a wall.
I'm just teasing, but we do.
We think of the worst of us.
You know, we're going to testthe theory Love everybody.
Well, we don't think about theones we love first, we think
about the ones we don't love somuch.
(15:32):
And we go and we try to testthis theory of grace.
Would this really work?
Can I really love everyone?
And then we go and we startmaking up some sort of rubric to
figure it out.
All right, this sin, right here, is a five, this one's a two,
this one's a 37.
So you're getting these people,maybe?
Oh, but you're and we're.
(15:53):
I'm going to need a spreadsheetto figure out what really
qualifies.
And we're able to get around,see, and we're laughing a little
bit, but you engineers outthere, you've tried to do that,
haven't you?
I know engineers, you've triedto figure it all out.
And we end up in this placewhere we're trying to create
(16:15):
this system.
But we also have to recognizethat by loving everyone, it
means all the people, even thegood ones.
And have we ever really askedourselves is anyone really all
good?
Where are the lines?
(16:36):
Who gets to make the lines?
What are the people that we arewilling to offer grace to?
The ones we're willing to love,and where's that line to where
we don't need to, to the oneswe're willing to love, and
where's that line to where wedon't need to?
To me, it's even a slipperyslope to go to the next stage
(17:02):
when we say how can God?
love everyone.
How long does it take for thatquestion to lead us to the
mirror?
Is it possible?
What we're really saying is howcan God really love me
(17:29):
unconditionally?
You know we are our biggestcritics.
We are our biggest critics.
We are our own biggest critics.
And you know why?
Because we know what we'vegotten away with, am I right?
We know what we've gotten awaywith.
We know what we continue to getaway with the bigger things,
(17:51):
the not so big things.
Only we know how imperfect wecan be, how imperfect we truly
are.
Is it possible that when weconsider the possibility of the
reality of God's grace and beingable to live God's
unconditional love for us andfor everyone, that we aren't
(18:14):
always sure that we believe itabout ourselves?
We're not sure that we arefully worthy of unconditional
love?
To me, this is why Paul's wordsin Ephesians are so powerful,
so important.
(18:35):
Look at what it says Saved bygrace through faith.
Why does our unconditional love, god's grace, have to come
through faith?
Because you have to believe itfor it to be real.
If we want it to be real in ourheart and real in our lives,
(19:02):
then we're going to have tobelieve that it is true.
We're going to have to believethat God loves us
unconditionally.
Sometimes people ask me how Iknow.
Something from Scripture istrue, and I love this passage
for an answer to that question.
What I've learned by readingScripture is we've been
(19:24):
wrestling with this question ofour worthiness for 5,000 years.
I've learned from readingScripture that we were wrestling
with this question for at least2,000 years, from Jesus' time,
and we are still wrestling withit today.
(19:48):
That is how I know it is true.
It is true about us.
It is true about our situation.
It is true about us.
It is true about our situation.
It is true about ourrelationship with God.
We wrestle with this questionof our worthiness and what we
need to do to be seen worthy inGod's eyes.
(20:10):
Despite having teaching fromJesus that said God loves us
unconditionally, having teachingfrom Jesus that said God loves
us unconditionally.
To me, in this way, we canrecognize the importance of our
belief in grace.
In fact, it might even beessential.
(20:33):
I think the journey of faith,at least a piece of the journey
of faith, can be marked from thetransition in this statement.
We have to go from that placeof God loves me because of this
and this and this, to the moredifficult side of the statement
(20:53):
God loves me despite this andthis and this.
To me, this is the coreingredient for being able to
live a life of grace.
We can't love othersunconditionally if we don't love
(21:16):
ourselves unconditionally, orat least trust in God's
unconditional love for us.
To me, this is what we see withJean Valjean.
He spends the first part of hislife in the most graceless
state of our world Deep inpoverty.
He steals bread for his nieceand his nephew to live.
(21:40):
For this he's given a five-yearsentence, extended to 19, for
escaping an unfair sentence, agraceless existence.
His second stage starts fromthis act of grace the not the
bishop not only forgives thestealing, but gives him what he
(22:02):
needs to start over.
The bishop offered him grace.
The next moment of transitionfor Valjean is he's faced with
this dilemma does he revealhimself to do the right thing in
his justice?
The right and the wrong to dothe right thing in his justice?
The right and the wrong to dothe right thing, even though
helping Fantine brings attention, even though he knows a full
(22:27):
confession of who he is, willfree that other man, but
absolutely convict him.
But absolutely convict him Tome, his response to these
situations.
They are his statements of hisbelief in grace.
He had to trust that grace wasreal and that God would be with
(22:48):
him as he moved into thatearthly jeopardy that lay ahead
for him.
I told you we were going tohear this song.
Who am I?
It's this song of declarationthat he makes In getting that
conviction off of the other manMistaken to be him.
(23:11):
He yells out loud.
It's out loud.
It is me.
I am Jean Valjean.
My hope is that you not onlyhear that declaration but you
might also hear the words God'slove, god's unconditional love,
(23:36):
is real.
I pray you hear thatdeclaration.
Joseph Cowdrey (23:54):
(singing " Who am I?
Can I condemn this man toslavery?
Pretend I do not see his agony,this innocent who wears my face,
who goes to judgment in myplace?
Who am I?
Can I conceal myselfforevermore?
Pretend I'm not the man I wasbefore, and must my name, until
(24:19):
I die, be no more than an alibi.
Pretend I'm not the man I wasbefore, and must my name, until
I die, be no more than an alibi.
Must I lie?
How can I ever face my fellowman?
How can I ever face myselfagain?
My soul belongs to God.
I know I made that bargain longago.
He gave me hope when hope wasgone.
He gave me strength to journeyon.
(24:44):
Who am I?
Who am I?
I'm Jean Valjean, and so Javert.
(25:05):
You see, it's true, this manbears no more guilt than you.
Who am I?
Two, four, six, oh one.
Who am I?
24601!
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