He could see two ways ahead of him, and this appalled him, because hitherto he had never seen more than one straight line. Javert in Les Misérables
The movable feast day of Corpus Christi (the Eucharist) takes over this Sunday, sidetracking the normally scheduled Scripture readings of Ordinary Time. Nevertheless I think the normally scheduled Gospel reading for today needs attention – because it is a bit shocking. It’s about Jesus’ extended family trying to kidnap him, to get him out of the limelight, lest it bring trouble upon them – and thereby excusing his behavior by telling people he was simply “out of his mind” – a low blow if ever there was one and something the Soviets used to say of anyone who varied from the party line – before they sent him off to a Siberian labor camp.
But this Sunday’s scheduled Gospel reading is also about Jesus’ attracting the attention of the legal experts of the Temple in Jerusalem who sense he needs to be watched, even stopped from what he is doing, that he is an agent of Satan – what with his healings and teaching of mercy and especially his apparent neglect of ritual rules when he thought it necessary. What they seem to forget is that it is they who have the traits of Satan which means Adversary. Satan as described in the Book of Job was the prosecutor in God’s celestial courtroom. His was the responsibility to find fault wherever he could and see that punishment was administered. So he is not like the pimp we thought him to be, who would tempt us to visit some house of ill repute. He was the Adversary, humanity’s bad conscience, Warden of the Big House otherwise known as Hell.
So the doctors of the law, the investigators sent down by the Temple authorities, are more satanic (adversarial), more agents of Satan than Jesus. They are not unlike Inspector Javert in Victor Hugo’s story Les Misérables (I’m sure most of you have seen the musical if not read the book). For Javert the law is everything, it simplifies life – anyone who breaks it needs to be hounded to his or her confinement or death. He therefore tracks Jean Valjean relentlessly on the assumption that he is guilty of something – until the moment when it is Jean Valjean who saves Javert’s life from a revolutionary mob. Jean Valjean’s sparing the very man who would imprison him left Javert confused: . . . his greatest anguish was his loss of certainty. He had been torn up by his roots . . . he had entered a new strange world of humanity, mercy, gratitude and justice other than that of the law. He contemplated with horror the rising of a new sun. It was more than Javert could handle. He ends up drowning himself in the Seine.
So also the doctors of the law who were investigating Jesus as a possible threat to their Temple and their Law were on the verge of experiencing a fright similar to that of Javert. For in explaining what he is doing: healing, forgiving, associating with outcasts, saying things like the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, Jesus describes himself as indeed a burglar breaking into this world as already owned by Satan, the adversarial spirit that infects the inquisitors from Jerusalem. And Jesus goes on to say that all his miracles, his homilies are his way of tying Satan (and the Javerts of society) up in knots even as they tie people up in knots. And once he has tied up Satan (and the Javerts of society) by his baffling works of mercy – his intent is to ransack Satan’s house – to release us all from our constantly adversarial way of life. [And who wants to give that up?] As Victor Hugo writes of Javert: What was happening to Javert resembled the de-railing of a train – the straight line of the soul broken by the presence of God . . . the true conscience as opposed to the false; the eternal, splendid presence.