United Methodist Church Westlake Village

Wrestling with Grace: Les Misérables and the Balance of Justice

• United Methodist Church Westlake Village

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The tension between justice and mercy creates one of life's most profound spiritual dilemmas. Through the character of Inspector Javert from Les Misérables, we explore what happens when justice becomes divorced from mercy, and a system of rules becomes an idol.

Javert's obsessive pursuit of Jean Valjean spans decades, even as he witnesses evidence of Valjean's transformation and redemption. Born into poverty himself, Javert responds by becoming rigidly committed to upholding the law without exception. Where Valjean learns to accept and extend grace, Javert cannot see beyond his black-and-white understanding of justice.

The climax of their relationship arrives when Javert, finally showing mercy by allowing Valjean to rescue the wounded Marius, finds himself unable to live with this transgression against his principles. His suicide raises profound questions: Can justice without mercy ever be truly just? How do we create systems that allow for redemption while maintaining boundaries? What happens when we make idols out of human systems, even seemingly virtuous ones like justice?

Drawing from 2 Timothy and Jesus's summary of the commandments—"Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself"—we discover that faith often means navigating complexities rather than seeking absolutes. God doesn't offer a comprehensive rulebook for every situation but instead provides these two guideposts to orient our journey. When we truly love God and neighbor, we're moving in the right direction, even amid life's most challenging ethical dilemmas.

How might your understanding of justice be transformed by making room for grace? Where in your life have you witnessed the redemptive power of mercy? Join us as we continue this faith journey, learning to balance justice and grace in a broken but beautiful world.

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Pastor Darren:

Good to be with you today. 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. 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. That on the faith journey. 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. 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. 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. But maybe we will play with that a little bit later this morning. So we're on Javert. 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. 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. But his response is different than Val John's response. His response is to become highly, highly, highly committed to justice, hardline justice. What's the law? Well, that's the law. That is what we are going to be living out. 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. 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. And when we say obsessed, we're talking about 1,000 pages of Obsessed, obsessed. 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. I'm not bothered that I'm preaching on something you read and I didn't read. I'll just find out. Right, taylor, you read it. No See, and we're English majors. Maybe we should have been French majors. We got away 1,400 pages. I'd rather read some poetry, maybe I don't know. 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. And we're talking about these years. So, as the story moves on, javert actually discovers Valjean later in life. This is the point at which Valjean had actually made something of his life. He escapes from prison and he's done so well. He's actually the mayor of the town, very well thought of, seems to be doing a good job of being mayor. 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. 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. 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. So he even sees in these different situations that Valjean is actually in a different place.

Pastor Darren:

Later they re-engage. Javert is actually the receiver of Valjean's grace, something that Javert rarely gave to Valjean. They end up in the revolutionary action. Javert has been a spy on the revolutionary people's side. He's been discovered. 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. It really had made his life a hell and yet amidst that, valjean finds his way to be gracious and let him live. But the climactic scene for this relationship is when Javert has opportunity to once again capture Valjean. 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. Even against his own heartfelt desires. 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. 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. He is so mad at himself he ultimately throws himself in the river, saying we don't fully know why he does this. Does he feel the need to punish himself because he's allowed mercy, not justice, to rule his life? 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? 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? 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. 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. What lands him in prison. He's stealing bread to feed his starving niece and nephew. This is what he serves, ultimately, 19 years for. 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. There's a context there that needs to be in play in the way we live out the punishment. 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. 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. His understanding is not without some theological grounding that he is holding on to. He talks of men like Valjean as having fallen from grace. They made a choice to abandon God with their acts. Therefore, they are in some ways deserving of the punishment they're receiving. 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. 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. We're starting to see that Valjean is rising above his graceless state. He is starting to be redeemed. He's a good person and he shows this to Javert in multiple ways. But for Javert this is of no consequence. He made choices against God. There is a punishment for that happening. The only appropriate response is that he live out this plan of justice, this system of justice. 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. No room for mercy, for grace or really for God to do what God can do. Ultimately, javert ends his life letting Valjean go, like I said, unable to accept that. Well, he ends his life unable to accept that he has committed this horrible, horrible act of grace. 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. Life is really about navigating between these both. 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. It's something we might call mercy, an act that turned out to be too difficult for Javert. 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? We want it a little easier, a little more straightforward. Give us another ten commandments, god. Those were pretty clear. Not that we're good at following all of them, but they were commandments, god. Those were pretty clear. Not that we're good at following all of them, but they were clear. God, we'll program them in. We won't have to wrestle with these difficult questions anymore. We want, these times, we want to yell out make it clear, god. But when the answer is trust, live in faith. We want more from God. But when the answer is trust, live in faith. We want more from God. We want freedom, but not a lot of freedom To think, to believe. We don't really want to hear that answer of faith, that answer of truth, because we want something more absolute. We can yell to God in this context today Is it grace, is it mercy, or is it justice and law? And you know what the answer is it comes back from God. The answer is yes, it is mercy, grace, justice and law and we don't really like that. Just tell me the answers, god, I'll take the test and I'll get an A. 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. The first is from second Timothy, and the hope in the scripture itself is a. Paul is trying to affirm Timothy. He is a young protege, a young leader in the church and he's trying to build his confidence to a certain extent. But his words to Timothy can speak to our challenge that we are wrestling with today here. 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. From childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 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. 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. Figure out ways of moving forward. We've known about God's capacity for redemption. We want to be able to live that out in our justice systems, both our personal justice systems and our community institutional justice systems. 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. 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. This is both comforting and a little frustrating. I mentioned our human desires for absolutes comforting and a little frustrating. 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. But Jesus seems to bring it all back to faith, to trusting in God, loving God, loving neighbor. It's really kind of a summary of the ten, isn't it? 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. 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. We are encouraged to remember these guideposts and hopefully it might help you to remember it this way Love God, love neighbor. If we can walk those two things, we are at least in God's spirit. 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. Javert was somebody who wrestled with this guidance. I would argue like I said. He makes an idol out of our justice system. 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.