Beggars at the Feast
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
My cousin Heidi and her family recently got back from a trip across Europe, and seeing her amazing pictures reminded me of a trip to Europe my Dad took me on when I was in high school. It was amazing - Moscow and St Petersburg to Paris and London.
At some point (I say London, he says Paris), we saw Les Miserables, which is an incredible musical based on the book by Victor Hugo. It's got an amazing range of characters and themes, such as redemption, grace and heroism, as well as heartless cruelty, greed and pride. The hero, Jean Valjean, experiences dramatic, life-altering grace in the play's opening scenes, but then is pursued by the heartless gendarme Javert, who knows only justice. In another scene towards the end, the Thénardiers - unscrupulous mercenaries who run a cheap hotel - crash a wedding, singing a song called "beggars at the feast."
The contrast between Javert and Valjean is intentionally obvious, but the Thenardiers play a much more subtle counterpoint. Valjean is given grace he could not have earned, and freely admits it. The Thenardiers, on the other hand, owe nothing to anyone - or so they claim. In reality, they're hopelessly in debt and simply refuse to admit it.
I'm reading through Romans, and it struck me that this is actually quite biblical - though it's tough to accept, I think. In theological terms, it's called "imputed righteousness," which means a righteousness that is not ours is given to us. To put it more bluntly, we're charity cases with a lot more in common with the Thenardiers than with humble Valjean.
It's not a particularly nice thought, at least to those of us in the Enlightenment West. We go to church and happily affirm that we're saved by grace, but we live as if our performance was the thing that matters most to God.
And let's be clear: in one sense, it does. The world is a nasty place because so few people truly live as if their performance made a difference. What if everyone lived like Mother Theresa of Calcutta, for example?
In the end, though, even a superficial read through the Bible shows that even Mother Theresa's performance - though an awesome example of what loving our neighbor should look like - wasn't enough by itself for God to consider her righteous. Like you and me, she was bankrupt. A charity case. A beggar, like those she helped.
I saw a quote that put this well:
"No man who is too proud to be infinitely in debt will ever be a Christian."
-- James S. Stewart
The thing is, I'm pretty proud. I like being self-sufficient, and the thought of taking charity from anyone really bothers me. But the Gospel has no room for this kind of pride. The righteousness of God is a gift of God. I can't do good stuff and then demand that He give it to me. This is where "imputed righteousness" comes in. The solution to the world's problems doesn't live within us - it comes from God as a gift to the spiritual panhandlers who recognize that they're broke.
Some pretty clear verses say this.
Romans 1:17; 3:21-22; 10:3 are a good start. Ephesians 2:8-9 is also pretty unambiguous.
Valjean was humbled by grace and never forgot it. Like Luther, Augustine, Paul and many others, he recognized that he couldn't make himself righteous. The righteousness he needed couldn't be earned. It had to be begged for.
Labels: Les Miserables, Redemption, Sin
