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The following message for the moment is delivered by the Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. Today's sermon is the fourth in a series. Give my regards to Broadway. Le Miserable. Let us continue in worship by giving attention to the reading of God's Word

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as it is recorded in the Gospel of Matthew the 23rd chapter. I begin the reading at the verse numbered 16. Jesus is speaking. Woe to you blind guides who say if anyone swears by the temple it is nothing but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple he is bound by his oath. You blind fools for which is greater the

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gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred and you say if anyone swears by the altar it is nothing but if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar he is bound by his oath. You blind men for which is greater the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred. So he who swears by the altar swears by it and

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by everything on it and he who swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it and he who swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice

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and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. You blind guides straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you cleanse the outside of the cup and of the plate but inside they are full of extortion and rapacity. You blind Pharisee, first

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cleanse the inside of the cup and of the plate that the outside also may be clean. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs which outwardly appear beautiful but within they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to men but

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within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous saying, "If we had lived in the days of our fathers we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets." Thus you witness

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against yourselves that you are the sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up then the measure of your fathers, you serpents, you brood of vipers. How are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify and some you will

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scourge in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barakiah whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly I say to you, all this will come upon this generation. And

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may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. The September 2nd issue of Time magazine asked the question, "Why is it that three

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musicals, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, and Les Miserables, are unquestionably the most successful musicals, theater productions in all of history?" Time proposes three answers to the question. It mentions first the added convenience of air travel, it mentions second television advertising, and it mentions

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third the use of other marketing techniques. Now I am sure that all of these have made a contribution to the phenomenal success of these three musicals, but they are not the principal answer to the question. These plays are as popular as they are, more popular than any plays in all of history, because of a

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basic hope that exists in the heart of all humankind, that in the end love will be victor over law, that compassion is light years beyond legalism, that greed will be defeated by God. To demonstrate this, I ask you to look with me at just one of these plays, Les Miserables. It is the story of Val-Jean Valjean, who is

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sentenced to prison for 19 years because he steals a loaf of bread to feed some hungry children. Finally he is released from prison, but he can find no work because his record as a convict condemns him every time he applies for a job, and so he steals again in order to live, and an inspector Javert of the police is put

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upon his case to pursue him, hunt him down, and jail him once more. Valjean next attempts to rob a bishop, trying to steal the man's silver candlesticks, the only treasure he really had, and the bishop astonishes Valjean by giving to him a the silver candlesticks, and by saying to him, "You are forgiven." And Valjean

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experiencing this marvelous love in this man so indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, Valjean is so moved in his own heart that he is converted to faith, and he pledges himself to love as he has been loved by Christ and by Christ's man who has here forgiven him. And so he adopts a new identity. He calls himself Monsieur

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Madeleine, and he's very successful in business, developing a factory where the employees are treated fairly, not as employees were commonly treated in that day. Now on to the core of this story, Victor Hugo adds three threads of additional narrative. The first concerns a poor woman named Fantine who, in order

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to feed herself and her sickly child Cosette, must sell herself into prostitution. Inspector Javert attempts to arrest her for her prostitution, but Valjean sneaks her away to a quiet place, where as she dies, she makes him promise to take care of her daughter for as long as he lives, and he takes little

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Cosette under his wing. The second thread is that he is astonished to read in the paper one day that Inspector Javert is claiming triumph, that he has in fact found Jean Valjean and put him on trial. Of course, it's not the real Valjean at all, and the real Valjean knows that, and he knows that if he does nothing, then

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this man who is altogether innocent is going to be condemned to jail, and the question is, is he to give up his new identity and the ministry of care and compassion which he has to Cosette and to all those who work for him in order to keep this one man out of prison, or is to reveal that he is himself the real

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Valjean, so that the man in the dock will be set free and guided by the mercy and the love which he has received from God. Valjean surrenders himself to the police so that the innocent man may go free, and once again, Valjean is committed to prison, but he escapes, and finding little Cosette, he takes her to

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Paris, and there in the back streets of Paris, they are present when the poor of Paris rebel against those with power and wealth who continually oppress them, and amongst the young men who are engaged in the rebellion is a fellow named Marius who meets Cosette, and the two fall in love. Valjean opposes this love

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relationship because he does not know much about Marius, because he fully expects him to be killed in the rebellion, and because there is some desire in him not to let Cosette go, but her love for Marius is so great that Valjean prays that Marius may get through the rebellion alive, and then

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Valjean goes to the barricades himself to try to save Marius should anything happen to him. There at the barricades, he meets Inspector Javert, but he manages to avoid the inspector, and he rescues the wounded Marius and carries him off to a private place, and then, utterly exhausted, he falls to the ground, and as

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he, Jean Valjean, is dying, he tells little Cosette for the first time the story of all his life, and then passes from this earth. A man who was loved of God and therefore loved others even at great sacrifice, leaving a world swarming with those who are filled with hate and hardness. The essence of the drama you

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see centers in the personalities of Jean Valjean on the one hand and Inspector Javert on the other. Valjean sings a song you just heard a moment ago, "Who Am I," in which he says he cannot lie and he cannot stop loving because he himself has been loved to the uttermost, and no matter what the cost, he will have mercy

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as God has had mercy upon him. This is the guiding spirit of his life because of his Christian commitment. Javert, on the other hand, sings a song called "Stars," which was also sung in your hearing, in which he claims that just as the stars move in their icy courses throughout space in accordance with the rules of

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natural law, so all people are to move in perfect obedience to God's law, and to the degree that they fail to do that, they will be forever condemned. They will fall, he says, like Lucifer, and they will never be admitted within the gates of paradise. Valjean, on the one hand, is a suffering Christ figure who

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spends himself in the loving service of others, and Inspector Javert, on the other hand, is the legalistic Pharisee who resents any attempt to lay aside even the smallest jot or tittle of the law, and he pursues Valjean just as the Pharisees of long ago pursued Jesus. And here we have presented to us the two

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great alternatives which confront every person, whether we will be agents of love or agents of law. Now on the face of it, the answer to that question is not difficult. Think of it in terms of your own relationship to God. When that time comes that you stand before God, would you think of saying to him, "God, I do not

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want anything of your love. Simply give me the justice I deserve." Would you, for even a moment, reach out for the judge's gavel instead of the judge's cross? Would you say to God, "I don't need your love, for I have perfectly fulfilled your law. Measure me by your perfection. I do not require your compassion. I'm ready for

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your icy judgment. I do not need the warm passion of your heart." Even the very best of us would never dare so address God, for we all know how far we have fallen short of what God requires of us. We all know that we need to be loved and that we not only need to be loved, but we need to learn from the love which God

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has given to us so that we can mirror that love into all the world. That much of the question, whether law or love is of ultimate importance, is easy to answer. What becomes more difficult is how to live out this love. You see, this love is not simply an emotion. It is not a naive attachment. It's not being drawn to

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someone because of your affection. It's not some fondness that you can turn off or on like a faucet. The love of God, the love to which we are called, is a love built upon principle, a love which exists in those who receive it only because they receive it. The Scriptures say we love because he first loved us. And if

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we're going to love as he loves, then we love people not because of what they are, but in spite of what they are. And this becomes the real problem in this matter of being Christian. Now make no mistake, when I suggest that this love is a principle but not an emotion, I am not saying that it is any less real. I'm not

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suggesting that it is in any way something that does not require the heart, that does not indeed sometimes break the heart. I am not saying that it is without cost. I remember in my very first pastorate making a call upon a woman who was in a psychiatric hospital. I was sitting with her in her room,

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pleased at the obvious progress which she was making, when suddenly the door was hurled open with such violence that it almost leaped from its hinges. And there standing in the doorway, naked from the waist up, was a young man, heavily muscled, he looked like an oak tree, he filled that doorway and his face was red

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with fury as he stared at us and said, "I have come to curse you!" The woman began to weep. My mind began racing for something to say, something to do. I could hear the footsteps of the attendants running down the halls, but before more than another second or two had gone by, he screamed it out again, "I have come to

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curse you!" And looking into the face of this young man whom I had never seen before and have never seen since, I said to him, "Then I shall bless you." And that startled him. "Why would you bless me?" he said. "Because," I replied, "my Lord says that we are to bless those who curse us." And just as I said that, the attendants got

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there and took him away. Why do I tell you that? Why do I relate this story to you? As an act of confession, because the fact of the matter is that I was not seeking to bless that young man in any way, shape, or form. I was trying to save my skin and the skin of the woman who was at my side. My concern was not really

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for him. My concern was for us and for no one other than us. There was no real blessing in this. There was no reality in what I said. There was no risk involved. There were none of those things which are at the heart of love, a genuine service, a real forgiveness, an ascendance of love over the law, the

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noblest of human emotions. These things were not there. But these are the things that we want to be there. These are the things that we want to discover in ourselves, and these are the things we want to discover in the world, and that's the reason the 24 theatrical companies are presently performing Les Miserables

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around the world. It has already had more than 14,000 performances and the number grows every day. You see, it speaks to that desire in every healthy heart and mind to be loved and to be an honest, sacrificial lover. And what is difficult to grasp on a personal level is also difficult to approach on a social level.

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I mentioned to you that when Jean Valjean with Little Cassette gets to France and into Paris and into the back streets of that city, there's a rebellion going on. The students are opposing the forces that put down the poor and the subject, the same kind of thing you saw in Tiananmen Square or before the

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Russian White House just a few weeks ago. And these students are gathered behind a barricade, there to fight off the forces of the powerful that are being marshalled against them. And Inspector Javert is there pretending to be someone else. He's attempting to betray the students, to mislead them so that they will think

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that they are not going to be attacked until tomorrow and that the attack will come from this direction and not from that direction. But Javert is discovered. He is revealed, you see, as a man who will stand for the law no matter how unjust the law may be and who demands of others that they either abide by the law or

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that they die. And when Jean Valjean comes to the barricades to protect the young Marius, he meets Javert there and he has the opportunity in a brief moment to kill him, but he doesn't do so because mercy seasons justice. He is concerned principally with the union of all in the service of all. I never read

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that passage in the book or think of it in the play without remembering the words that Albert Einstein wrote in a letter to a friend. He said, "Strange is our situation here on earth. Each of us comes for a short time not knowing why. The only thing that we do know is that we are here for the sake of others."

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There's the inner song of a loving spirit. There's the essence of noble sacrifice. There is compassion, not cupidity. And what does this say to our time? Our government announced last week that 14% of our population is now living below the poverty level. The number has increased by 2 million in the last 12

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months. 17% of the children of America now live in poverty. Less than one-third of those in this country who are eligible for welfare ever apply for it. And of those who do apply, 40% are elderly, blind, or crippled, and 40% are dependent children. The other evening, I was leaving the church late and as I

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walked toward the Mellon Square parking garage, I was approached by a young man, well-dressed, shoes shined, suit, white shirt, tie, raincoat, had a briefcase under his arm. He walked up to me and he said, "Sir, would you please give me some money?" And I looked at him and I said, "You don't look like the kind of person who

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needs any money." He said, "I lost my job two years ago. I have only these good clothes left and I save them for those occasions when I'm interviewing. I have just these clothes and I have no money to eat and my briefcase is empty." We have a tendency to think that poverty is naked, hungry, sick children. That's not always

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so. Poverty is sometimes well-dressed, looking for a job. Poverty is death, pretending to be alive. And we are called by the Christ whose name we bear to the service of such ones, to the barricades. We are to love as we ourselves have been loved. Jesus says in Matthew 23, in this stern condemnation of the Pharisees, "You

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burden others for your own profit. Woe to you! You exercise unjust authority by improper law. Woe to you! You practice a religion which is ritual and does not have at its center the commitment of the heart. Woe to you! You say that you would not have been unjust as those in the past have been unjust, and yet you

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practice the same injustices. Woe to you! Love God! Love your neighbor! Love is the fulfillment of the law. If you love, you do not commit adultery. Adultery is not too much loving. Adultery is too little loving. If you love, you do not kill, for love does not kill its enemies. It changes them into friends. If you love,

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you do not steal, for love is more anxious to give than it is to get. If you love, you do not covet, for covetousness is an uncontrollable desire, and love cleanses the heart of it. If you love, you do not dishonor your parents, for you understand yourself to be because of an act of their love. And if you love, you do

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not fall down before any false god, because love is the ultimate expression of truth, and there can be only one truth, and that one truth is God. Paul sums it all when he says in Romans 13, "Love does no wrong to another, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." Across the years, many people have tried to build a

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kingdom of peace on earth, and they've tried to build it on law, social laws, economic laws, political laws, religious laws, but no peaceable kingdom will ever be so built. It can only be built when it rests upon the foundation of the kingdom of God. It will only come about when those who understand themselves to be

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heart-brokenly loved are willing to break their own hearts in loving, to mirror the miracle of God's grace. Love keeps no score of wrongs, but only of those things that are right. We are called upon to love as young Valjean loved. Inspector Javert could not understand that. He was seeking

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perfection. He was seeking justice, but suddenly, in a moment of confrontation with Valjean, he recognizes that he is a moral failure, that he has in fact none of the nobility which exists within the sacrificing Valjean. And to make matters worse, because he has always believed in a God who did not forgive, but who instead

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insisted that we obey the law, because that's the only God that Javert knows. He cannot go to his God and ask to be loved and forgiven. And so in tragic desperation, he hurls himself into the watery depths, a pathetic suicide. Les Miserables captures the crowds and captures the applause because it teaches

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once again the lesson that humanity has never learned, but never has been quite able to learn. Pathological. That we will be measured by love, not by law, and that we will come to measure others by love and not by law. The hope in the heart of every honest

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spirit that the day will come when the whole world is drunk with love. And what are we to do until that time? Well, when Uncle Pietro was 75 years old, the people in this little village in Italy got together and each family in the village brought a bottle of its finest wine, and all of this wine was poured into one

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barrel, and this was to be given to Uncle Pietro for his long pleasure. And after all the bottles had been emptied into the barrel, and after the felicitations and congratulations had been given and the party had broken up, old Uncle Pietro went over to the barrel and taking a cup, decided to taste this rich mix of wines

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which had been given to him. But lo, when he turned the cock and filled the cup and tasted its contents, he found that it was pure water. Why? Because everyone had the same thought. If everybody else brings wine, then I can bring water and no one will ever notice my water amidst all that wine. Each assumed the love of

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the others. Well, that's not the way it's going to happen, because the world, my dear friends, begins with us. We must choose Christ, which means we must obey Christ, as Jean Valjean. That kind of loving is not always easy. It is sometimes rebuffed and cruelly refused. But there comes a place toward the end

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of the musical when a young girl named Eponine, who has fallen in love with Marius, but Marius does not love her, he instead loves Cosette. When this young girl Eponine swears that in spite of the fact that her love is not returned, she will continue loving, she sings, "Though all be blind, though all dreams disappear

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in the cold light of morning, and though the streets be filled with strangers, still I will go on loving. I love," she sings, "I love, even if only on my own. I love." May that be the song of every one of us. Let us pray.

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Our Father, we know that if we do not choose to be Valjean, then we can only choose to be Javert. And if that is our choice, then the world will continue to be the twisted, ugly thing it often is, instead of the beautiful thing that you who made it wanted to be. Oh God, if we do not love as we have been loved, then we

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will now and forever be what are called in the language of a land far from our own. Les miserables, the miserable. Take away our misery by thy forgiveness, by thy infilling Spirit, and by the thrill of living like Jesus, even in the midst of a world of Javert's. We pray our prayer in our Savior's name, amen.

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