I’m celebrating the 40^th anniversary of the greatest musical ever written. Yesterday, we looked at the story of Jean Valjean: how he was shown undeserved mercy, and responded to that by sharing that same kindness to others, no matter what it cost him. He “lived up to” the grace he had received.

Today, we look at another character, with a completely different response to God’s grace. The policeman, Javert.

Javert: upholding the law

Yesterday, we left Javert still chasing the fugitive, Jean Valjean. His mission in life is to bring to justice this criminal mastermind who… uh… stole some bread. But the scope of the crime isn’t the issue. Javert is very much about the principle of the thing. And being a musical, of course he sings about his attitude toward justice and the law, calling upon the stars as his witness (again, read below and/or listen to the song, sung by the Javeriest of Javerts, and Playschool favourite, Philip Quast):

There, out in the darkness, a fugitive running, fallen from God, fallen from grace.
God be my witness: I never shall yield, till we come face to face!
He knows his way in the dark, mine is the way of the Lord
And those who follow the path of the righteous shall have their reward.
And if they fall, as Lucifer fell: the flame, the sword!
Stars in your multitudes, scarce to be counted,
Filling the darkness with order and light!
You are the sentinels, silent and sure, keeping watch in the night.
You know your place in the sky, you hold your course and your aim
And each in your season returns and returns and is always the same
And if you fall, as Lucifer fell: you fall in flames!
And so it must be, for so it is written on the doorway to paradise
That those who falter and those who fall must pay the price!
Lord let me find him that I may see him safe behind bars, I will never rest
Till then, this I swear… this I swear by the stars!

“And so it must be, and so it’s written on the doorway to paradise that those who falter and those who fall must pay the price!” Javert is a guy who lives by the rules! Valjean broke those rules, and Javert is going to make sure that he pays for it—no mercy shown!

We fast forward another decade, and Valjean is now living in Paris, still in hiding from Javert. And in Paris, a small uprising is about to take place: a group of student revolutionaries has erected barricades and is calling the people of Paris to rise up against the government. But one of these students is in love with Valjean’s adopted daughter, Cossette. So in order to protect him, Valjean has joined in with the students behind the barricades.

At the same time, the revolutionaries are secretly joined by a spy for the government—none other than police inspector Javert. His disguise lasts all of about 5 minutes, and he’s unmasked as a spy. So guess who volunteers to take Javert out and shoot him—Valjean!

So here we have Valjean and Javert face-to-face again—and this time Valjean is the one with the gun. Finally, he can be rid of Javert once and for all!  But he doesn’t shoot him.  Proving that he was truly changed by his encounter with grace all those years ago, he shows Javert mercy. He lets him go.

Now, if this were a Hollywood ending, Javert would see the error of his ways and his cold, dutiful heart would be changed by the mercy Valjean had shown to him. But this isn’t Hollywood; it’s based on a 19^th century French novel, which means that pretty much everyone has to die in the end. (With lots of cigarette smoke, gratuitous nudity, and Gerard Depardieu.)

Although Javert is shown the same kind of grace and mercy that Valjean was shown by the bishop, Javert has the exact opposite reaction to Valjean. He doesn’t accept and embrace the grace shown to him; he recoils from it. All his life he’s lived by the rules; he’s neither given nor received any mercy. So now, when he’s confronted by grace—by mercy and forgiveness—he can’t accept it. His whole worldview has crumbled through this one act of kindness.

This is the song he sings in response to Valjean’s act of grace—you might notice it’s the same melody as the song Valjean sang after he was shown grace by the bishop. But the words are very different. (Read and/or listen from 1’10”.)

Who is this man, what sort of devil is he?
To have me caught in a trap and choose to let me go free?
It was his hour at last to put a seal on my fate
Wipe up the past and watch me clean up the slate
All it would take was a flick of his knife
Vengeance was his and he gave me back my life
Damned if I’ll live in the debt of a thief
Damned if I’ll yield at the end of the chase
I am the law and the law is not mocked
I’ll spit his pity right back in his face
There is nothing on earth that we share: it is either Valjean or Javert!
How can I now allow this man to hold dominion over me?
This desperate man that I have hunted
He gave me my life, he gave me freedom
I should have perished by his hand—it was his right
It was my right to die as well; instead I live, but live in hell.
And my thoughts fly apart: Can this man be believed?
Shall his sins be forgiven? Shall his crimes be reprieved?
And must I now begin to doubt what I never doubted all those years?
My heart is stone but 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.
I am reaching but I fall, and the stars are black and cold
As I stare into the void of a world that cannot hold
I’ll escape now from that world, from the world of Jean Valjean
There is no where I can turn, there is no way to go on…

Javert takes his own life.  

Unable to reconcile the way his world worked with this radical act of kindness, it sends him over the edge. In Javert’s thinking, Valjean should have done the honourable thing and killed him—at least then he could have died with his principles of justice intact. In his response to grace, Javert is found wanting—trapped in his old worldview of justice and judgement.

What Javert didn’t realise is that he needed mercy, too. None of us measures up. Even those “good people” who keep the rules—no one is good enough to keep all the rules all of the time. As Paul says in Romans: There is no one righteous, not even one…  for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom 3:10, 23).

At some level, Javert and Valjean are the Pharisee and the Tax-Collector from Luke’s Gospel:

Luke 18:9-14 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable:

“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

In Les Misérables, the one who recognised that he was a sinner and accepted God’s mercy was the one who was saved. But the one who was offered mercy and rejected it—in favour his own rule-keeping—he was the one who was lost.

But just in case you thought the musical was all about individual responses to grace, we’ll come back tomorrow to see a wider perspective…