I have just watched Les Mis at the movies, I have never read the book but enjoyed the musical about ten years ago. What an amazing story of mercy! When Jean Valjean leaves jail after nearly 20 years for stealing a loaf of bread he thinks he is free but his past is going to haunt him as his papers say that he is a convict so he cannot get bread and he cannot get lodgings. His situation is utterly hopeless, hopeless that is until a priest shows him kindness by offering food and a bed for the night. How does Valjean react to this kindness? He steals all the silver he can find and flees in the night but he is caught very quickly and returned to the priest. The priest shows him even more undeserved kindness and tells the police that he didn't steal them, he was given them. He tells them that Valjean wasn't just given them but that he forgot the most valuable part of the gift, the large silver candlesticks and gives them to him. He then tells Valjean that he must use the gifts that have been given to him to become a better man. Valjean reaches a crisis point, he has been shown mercy and knows he cannot be the unloving person he has always been, he acknowledges his crimes and cries out to God dedicating his life to God. His crisis point ends as he determines that a new story must begin as Jean Valjean's story has now come to an end. Eight years later we find him running a factory and as mayor of a city. A man with a reputation for kindness and mercy who is respected by all and will help anyone whatever the cost. He is a new man.
Yet there is another figure we meet in the beginning, Javert the policeman. Javert is a law abiding citizen and doesn't understand how anyone could commit a crime or expect someone who commits a crime to ever be a changed man. They are lawless, always without grace and hope, and have no chance of finding God or heaven as they are damned. Javert is a tragic, heartless man, similar in many ways to a Pharisee. Javert meets the mayor and sees that he is Jean Valjean when the mayor shows mercy, as the mayor rescues someone stuck under a carriage and the mayor uses all his strength, it reminds Javert of Valjean . A light goes off in Javert's head that this man is Valjean and he relentlessly pursues justice from then on. The great tragedy that for Javert is that, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, he cannot see that Valjean is a new man, a changed man. It isn't until the end of the show that Javert, who has repeatedly seen the mercy and grace working in Valjean, reaches his own crisis point. Valjean is merciful, he has been merciful to Javert, but unlike Valjean, Javert is repelled by Grace. He will not be a debter to grace or mercy, not at the hands of a criminal like Jean Valjean. So Javert takes his own life rather than becoming a transformed man.
Victor Hugo writes a tale that could come out of the gospels with Valjean being like the tax collectors and sinners who were entering the kingdom whilst the Pharisees who sought to uphold the law were left outside. Valjean receives grace and becomes a grace-filled man who loves with compassion and whose crisis point leads on to a new life of mercy to others. He reveals himself to be a trophy of grace with his good works pointing away from himself to the one who showed mercy on him.
Are you a person who has known grace in your life, has this led to you becoming a trophy of grace displaying God's love to others? Jesus shows mercy to the undeserving for free, this leads to a new life of showing mercy to others.
Grace
Stephen <><
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