I want to cover my eyes; I cannot help but look. That’s the way I feel about the gripping scene in the moving 2012 production of Les Miserables in which Jean ValJean, the central character, hauls a nearly dead young man through a sewer to safety. ValJean has sought out Marius after discovering that he and his daughter are in love. Finding him behind a barricade preparing to fight, ValJean works to protect him. When Marius is badly injured in battle, ValJean, a man of supra-normal strength, drags him to the underground hiding place to escape the soldiers. He then puts Marius on his shoulders and sloshes through the dark sea of sewage. Tom Hooper, the producer, draws the audience into the scene so fully that we feel we can almost smell the acrid stench.
Watching ValJean’s eyes and mouth traced in a bizarre mask of muck, I realized the vast cost he paid for a man he barely knew. He literally plunges into the mire of human filth to save the man Marius; he also risks his own life and safety to do so [I will leave that part of the story untold since it’s something of a spoiler]. As hard as it is to watch this spectacle, it provides profound insight into what Christ did for us – he took on the sewage of our sin, wearing it himself, as he delivered us not only to safety but to glory. When we fully know and submit to this sacrifice, we understand our calling to incarnate such love, moving into the world to embrace neighbors and strangers with a costly compassion that grows in us through the grace-work of God.
What about you? Have you seen the movie? The show? Read the book? Do you have a favorite scene?
