A Reflection on Les Misérable

I and a few family members had the opportunity to see Les Misérable a few nights ago. I love that play. It’s a punch to the gut. I’m not much into musicals generally, but this one is the exception.

As Jean Valjean is near death in the end of the play, one thing stuck out to me. The ones who appear to comfort him in his last moments and welcome him into Paradise, as it were, are not angels, or some appearance of God, or even saints of old.

No, the main emissary of the afterlife is Fantine. The woman whose life and dream was cut short under his watch. The one whose dying charge he vowed to fulfill when he saw his error and what his actions (and inactions) had done. The one to whom he owed the most. The one whose forgiveness he’d had to earn, and make what restitution there was still left to be made after the damage done.

And then imagine (if I can take some liberty with the story) Javert’s end of life, had he succeeded in his mission. I believe he would have seen his peace with God in a wholly different light: I did what was right, what was my duty – whatever man thinks of me, I care not, I’m only accountable to the Law, the Almighty.

But the God who is Love says “If you’ve done it unto the least of these, you’ve done it unto me”. The dream of Les Misérable is not one of division between the Divine and the human Ordinary. At the end of our life, we’re not simply accountable to a disconnected Other Above us all. If God is truly the judge of us all in the end, the flesh and blood witnesses tell the story. Our ideas of God and the righteousness of our own actions are not the measure. If the words in scripture are true, and God is the advocate for the poor, the oppressed, the prisoner, the orphan, the widow, these will be witnesses for or against us at the end. The Lazarus at our gate becomes the Lazarus comforted by Abraham, finding rest where we gave him none.

This is just a play–a man’s dream–and our closure is probably not so dramatic, but I found it a powerful picture. If we can’t face the lives we’ve touched or neglected, how can we in any way face God? If we refuse to hear the blood crying out from the ground, how can we appeal to the Divine blood to cover us? If we’re content to let the poor and the outsider remain so, what welcome should we expect of the God of the poor and outsider? Would any of these, as Fantine did, actually want to meet with us in comfort at the end of our lives?

The oppressed may look to God as comforter, advocate, and final judge; Privilege meets its judges now, daily, in the flesh.

“To love another person is to see the face of God.”