In Les Miserables, Jean Valjean spends 19 years in prison for stealing
a loaf of bread. When he’s finally released, he breaks parole and flees to a
new town where he is taken in by a kindly bishop. He returns the kindness by
stealing the bishop’s silver. He’s caught, but when the police haul him before
the bishop, the bishop tells them that he gave the silver to him as a gift. It
is a pivotal moment of mercy, of undeserved love, that changes Jean Valjean,
who goes on to become a very admirable character. But he’s always on the run
for violating the terms of his parole, and he is pursued with a vengeance by a
police officer named Javert. Javert is a by-the-book person: everything is
black and white, right and wrong. Crime must be punished, and criminals are
beyond redemption. No one can change. His worldview is crystal clear and
merciless. Well, in the great upheavals of 1832, Valjean is helping some of the
leaders of the uprising when they capture Javert. And then Jean Valjean has his
great chance: he can kill this man who has pursued him for years and cast a
shadow over his whole life. But just as that bishop showed mercy to him at a
critical moment, he shows mercy to Javert and in a pure act of loving his
enemy, lets him go.
But the results are not the same.
Javert is not changed: he refuses to be. He cannot comprehend how any person
can show such love. He will not let it in. It actually throws him into despair:
he can’t live with the idea that his life has been granted to him as a gift by
this “criminal.” So he leaps to his death from a bridge, but right before he
does he sings these words:
And
must I now begin to doubt,
Who
never doubted all these years?
My
heart is stone and still it trembles.
The
world I have known is lost in shadow.
Is
he from heaven or from hell?
And
does he know
That,
granting me my life today,
This
man has killed me even so?
Now, I want to ask, “How could
anyone ever perceive a heavenly love as a hellish reality?” but I know better.
I have done it myself, and I have listened to many, many people do the same.
The reality is that it is hard to be loved, to let God’s love really penetrate
our being. For some people, it threatens their very sense of self: they don’t
feel like they are worthy of such love. The story they tell themselves is that
God’s love may be real, but it’s for other people. They are somehow outside the
reach of it. Others are just too busy and too focused on the daily grind: they
don’t want to deal with a God who is real and close and loves them personally
and passionately. They just want to check off the church box and then get on
with doing their job, taking their kids to soccer, and just trying to make it
through the week. And then others need to be in control: they want to feel like
they earn whatever they get, even heaven, and not be beholden to anyone, even
God. But underlying all of this, I believe, is the deep realization, which we
may not even consciously admit to ourselves, that if we allow ourselves to be
that open, that vulnerable, if we really let God love us, then it will change
us in ways we cannot predict or control. And, like Javert, we don’t like change:
that is what makes God’s love so scary.
And that is what makes John the
Baptist so scary. He wants people to actually experience the life-changing
nature of that love. He uses the imagery of fire: Jesus will baptize people
with fire, instilling new life and power within them. But the chaff, John says,
he will burn with unquenchable fire. The message is not that God will treat
some people well and others poorly. That is not true: God is always love. The key is remembering that the fire
which baptizes also burns; the love which uplifts us also undoes us. How we
experience the fire of God’s love depends on how open we are to letting it
change us. That’s why John criticizes the Pharisees and the Sadducees: they
want to go through the motions of repentance without ever allowing God to
change anything about them. For all their religious posturing, they don’t want
the divine fire to mess around with their lives at all. And so for them, that
fire can only feel destructive. Only those who are really open and willing can
know what it is like to be baptized by the Spirit and be led to richer, fuller
life in Christ.
I am better dressed and more
polite than John the Baptist, but my message today is essentially the same as
his. If we are just here to light candles and listen to pretty music, then
whatever else we may be doing, we are not preparing for the coming of Jesus
Christ into our lives. The outward forms of Advent are only beneficial to the
degree that they help us open our hearts and minds to the love of God which
Christ seeks to pour into us.
So here is my Advent challenge to
you: If you fully accepted that God is real, that Jesus is alive, risen from
the dead, and that the Holy Spirit is actually within you; if you fully accepted
that God knows you thoroughly and loves you unconditionally, what would change
in your life? If you were vulnerable enough to let the whole truth in, what do
you think would happen? Are there destructive behaviors you could finally let
go of? Would you forgive others more? Would you worry less? If the love of
Christ filled your being, do you imagine you would spend more time on the
people and activities that really matter and less time on trivial things that
frankly don’t matter at all? And how would that love affect your relationship with
money and status symbols and worldly success? But most important: when I ask
you questions like that, where do you feel resistance, where do you feel
yourself digging in? Because that is exactly where your Advent and my Advent
needs to happen — right where we are most guarded, unable to trust and
unwilling to change. That’s where we most need to let God’s love in. When John
the Baptist calls us to repentance, that’s what he’s talking about.
I’ve said it before, and I will
say it again. The great paradox of our faith: God loves us just the way we are,
but loves us too much to leave us that way. And every Advent we are confronted
with the same question: are we prepared to be loved like that? If the answer is
yes, then we can honestly pray the great Advent prayer: “Come Lord Jesus, come.”
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