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In Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, we get the story of Jean Valjean. At the start, Valjean is released from prison after 19 years, 5 for stealing bread to feed his family and the rest for all the times he tried to escape.
Valjean has a difficult time readjusting to the world. Because of his status as a parolee, no one will hire him or even take him in, not until Bishop Myriel gives him a place to stay. The Bishop has some wonderful silver silverware in his home, and Valjean starts to think that this silver might be his only hope to make any cash. He steals it and flees in the night.
But Valjean is captured by the police and taken back to the Bishop’s house for questioning. A surprising thing happens though. Instead of turning him in, Bishop Myriel asks Valjean why he left so soon before he could send him away with his beautiful silver candlesticks too.
The Bishop also leaves Valjean with an opportunity. In front of the police, he “reminds” Valjean of his “promise” to use the money to make an honest living from here on out.
Valjean does well for himself after that. He starts to live by a new name, just as he is living a new life. He even takes the opportunity to help and save others, even when it puts himself at risk with his new identity.
The good he does and tries to do is a result of what Bishop Myriel did for him. Valjean couldn’t claim to have done anything on his own. All that he has he gained from the grace of Bishop Myriel, not through his own honest work. That changed his perspective on right and wrong and how to live.
Whether or not we realize it, the same is true for us. We are nothing without the gift of Grace from God. We owe nothing to ourselves and everything to the Lord.
Yet it is so easy for us to forget that. This is why Jesus tells us “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.”
We see this played out in the so-called “Protestant Work Ethic”, which in truth has nothing to do with our Faith and most certainly doesn’t come from any Reformation notion, which is built first and foremost on Grace. This notion is that “the hand of the diligent maketh rich.”
It is the idea that the riches are something that we have earned. They are a sign of our worthiness. It is the idea that if we work hard, good things will come.
How do we square this idea with what we see in Job?
Here is a man who was rich just as he was upright before the Lord. Yet he later came to suffer. All the while, he held onto serving the Lord, only asking to know where God was in all this.
The power of Job is that his fidelity to God never truly wavers. He is in a small minority with that.
He is in a small minority because Job knows what he has doesn’t come from himself. As he said in our reading last week, “shall we only receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” Job realized that his hand wasn’t what “maketh” him rich. All he had, he owed to God.
How easy it can be for us to forget what God has done for us. How quickly we can forget that we are owed nothing in this world. How much we are in need to remember that, as a friend and colleague once said to me, “the kingdom of God isn’t fair and that’s good for us.”
The houses and mansions Jesus mentions in the next life, they are a free gift, just like the candlesticks Valjean received. They are a gift of Grace, unearned and undeserved.
When we start to fool ourselves and think that what we have is what we’ve earned, that the good we have is what we deserve, then we fool ourselves to the point we cannot enter the Kingdom of God because we cannot recognize that we can make it to that Heavenly City by the Grace of God and the Grace of God alone.
The work of God isn’t simply something we do. It is worked upon us. This is why Hebrews describes the Word of God as “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword.” It cuts at us. It cuts at our lives. It changes us in ways we will only realize if we keep our eyes open and are paying attention.
Hardships have a way of making us stronger because they help us realize just how much we need and rely on the Lord. Don’t let the good in life fool you into complacency to the point you forget the truth of Grace. Don’t let the bad lead you to despair either. Instead move forward, as Job eventually was able to do, realizing that no matter where we are or what our situation is, all we can ever do is lean on God’s presence with us.
Without our Lord we have nothing. Without the Lord we are nothing.