Audio of Pastor Darren Cowdrey's weekly message, as we work together toward fulfilling our mission statement: "Setting a Course for a Better Life."
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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.
Well, like I said, we are starting our Lenten journey. 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. Well. So I went to Gloria and I said, Gloria, I really like this, right, so I want to do it. But if we can't do it well this year, I want to save it. And she said we're due for something 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 we start this Lenten journey and it should be fun.
Pastor Darren:
So the material we're working from is this author Matt Rall. He's a pastor over in Louisiana, one of our own pastors. 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. 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. 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. We, you know we became the democratic experiment here as a new nation after our own revolution. Those ideas, that thinking, was originating in France. 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. So the backdrop we have here. 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. And what you might also remember is that it was a really big stage show. 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. And in fact we watched. What they did was filming a live version of the stage show last week and had a really good time with it. 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. Each week we kind of delve into a character.
Pastor Darren:
Today we delve into the main character, jean Valjean. He is, like I say, the main character. The story, at least in this stage version, opens with him doing really hard, hard labor in prison. He had been arrested and convicted for stealing bread for his niece and his nephew who were going hungry. The sentence for stealing bread for his hungry niece and nephew five years. But he had served 19 because he kept trying to escape. So finally he escapes one more time 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, 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. So he goes, he makes his way in the world and stage version, movie version we catch up with him many years later. He turns out to be quite successful. He is a man of certain wealth, he's owning factories and is even the mayor. But all the while he is being pursued by Inspector Javert. He is being pursued by Inspector Javert. Inspector Javert is somebody who's obsessed with justice. If this was your sentence, you need to live out your sentence. You did wrong. 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. 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. The complication really starts coming to a head when he learns of this young woman, Fantine. 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. The workers in the factory, along with the guy leading the factory, really mistreat her for different reasons. She ends up losing the job, ends up having to live on the streets doing sex work, donating her hair, donating her teeth. 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. 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. 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. 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. Can I let somebody pay the price for my actions, especially given that my revealing myself might lead me into being punished? You know, having to live out that crime, a punishment for a crime.
Pastor Darren:
That was iffy to start. 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. 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. 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. We need an intermission. 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. 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. We're pretty good at understanding in our heads what that word means. I have a relatively good relationship with my spouse, with my kids. I know what it means to live unconditionally, to live unconditionally. 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. Grace for all God's children, we might wrestle with that a little bit. Unconditional love, that's good for God, all right, I don't know if I can pull it off. 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. It's really to this community, this new church, Christian community. And remember, christianity is just kind of getting off the ground, especially in this sort of organized way. It kind of was just a movement when Jesus was around. Now they're trying to formalize it, create these communities, so these teachings that Paul's doing in these letters. They are foundational teachings, right? 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. So this particular lesson I can summarize in one, phraseed by grace through faith, saved by grace through faith. Big words, am I right? Saved, that's a big word when we're talking about that as part of our condition. Saved, what am I being saved from? I didn't choose to be born. Why did I need to be saved in this place? 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. And then faith, grace through faith. If grace is unconditional love, then where's faith come? Do I need to have faith in order to get grace? Are you telling me that God won't love me until I have faith Because that's a condition, isn't it? It's a massive theological statement that he makes in just this short, short way.
Pastor Darren:
Good questions for us to wrestle with. I think? Do you like to wrestle with questions? Questions for us to wrestle with, I think. Do you like to wrestle with questions? 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? Isn't this Valjean's kind of thing? He has trouble. He lived in such a horrible existence, a graceless existence, and then grace comes to him, but he doesn't trust it. He wrestles with it. 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? Right, we're going to take that if it's offered to us. With the story of Valjean, maybe we can understand why he would mistrust grace, coming from such a graceless experience. 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. 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. So why do we often wrestle with grace being true, being real, being meaningful? Is it because we have trouble living it? Is it because we have difficulty offering grace to everyone? God can do it, but I'm not sure I can pull it off. I mean that cynicism would be hard to argue with. 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. I'll give you the pastor joke for today. Man gets out of his car after having an accident. He's very frustrated, he's very angry. He goes to the other driver and he says why can't people learn how to drive? You're the fourth car I've hit today. 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. We have another reason to distrust God. When we think of grace and we think about loving everyone, we often envision the worst of us. Right, and I turn to the choir when I say it. We often envision there's a reason, they're behind a wall. I'm just teasing, but we do. We think of the worst of us.
Pastor Darren:
You know, we're going to test the theory Love everybody. Well, we don't think about the ones we love first, we think about the ones we don't love so much. And we go and we try to test this theory of grace. Would this really work? Can I really love everyone? And then we go and we start making 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.
Pastor Darren:
So you're getting these people, maybe? Oh, but you're and we're. I'm going to need a spreadsheet to figure out what really qualifies. 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? I know engineers, you've tried to figure it all out. And we end up in this place where we're trying to create this system. But we also have to recognize that by loving everyone, it means all the people, even the good ones. And have we ever really asked ourselves is anyone really all good? Where are the lines? Who gets to make the lines? What are the people that we are willing 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 ones we're willing to love, and where's that line to where we don't need to? To me, it's even a slippery slope to go to the next stage when we say how can God?
Pastor Darren:
love everyone. How long does it take for that question to lead us to the mirror? Is it possible? What we're really saying is how can God really love me unconditionally? You know we are our biggest critics. We are our biggest critics. We are our own biggest critics. And you know why? Because we know what we've gotten away with, am I right? We know what we've gotten away with. We know what we continue to get away with the bigger things, the not so big things. 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? We're not sure that we are fully worthy of unconditional love? To me, this is why Paul's words in Ephesians are so powerful, so important. Look at what it says Saved by grace through faith. Why does our unconditional love, god's grace, have to come through faith? Because you have to believe it for it to be real. 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. We're going to have to believe that God loves us unconditionally.
Pastor Darren:
Sometimes people ask me how I know. Something from Scripture is true, and I love this passage for an answer to that question. What I've learned by reading Scripture is we've been wrestling with this question of our worthiness for 5,000 years. 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. 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 our relationship with God. We wrestle with this question of our worthiness and what we need to do to be seen worthy in God's eyes. 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. In fact, it might even be essential. I think the journey of faith, at least a piece of the journey of faith, can be marked from the transition in this statement. 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. To me, this is the core ingredient for being able to live a life of grace. 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. He spends the first part of his life in the most graceless state of our world Deep in poverty. He steals bread for his niece and his nephew to live. For this he's given a five-year sentence, extended to 19, for escaping an unfair sentence, a graceless existence. 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. 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? The right and the wrong to do the right thing in his justice? 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. But absolutely convict him To me, his response to these situations. They are his statements of his belief in grace. 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. I told you we were going to hear this song. Who am I? It's this song of declaration that he makes In getting that conviction off of the other man Mistaken to be him. He yells out loud. It's out loud. It is me. I am Jean Valjean. 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. I pray you hear that declaration.
Joseph Cowdrey:
(singing " Who am I? 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? Who am I? Can I conceal myself forevermore? Pretend I'm not the man I was before, and must my name, until I die, be no more than an alibi. Pretend I'm not the man I was before, and must my name, until I die, be no more than an alibi. Must I lie? How can I ever face my fellow man? How can I ever face myself again? My soul belongs to God. I know I made that bargain long ago. He gave me hope when hope was gone. He gave me strength to journey on. Who am I? Who am I? I'm Jean Valjean, and so Javert. You see, it's true, this man bears no more guilt than you. Who am I? Two, four, six, oh one. Who am I? 24601!
