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It’s more than a little appropriate that the search for the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade brings with it a lot of conversations about Faith. Dr. Henry Jones, lifelong seeker of the Grail, is a firm believer while his son, Dr. Indiana Jones, wants little to do with anything to do with religion, beyond a purely archeological approach.
Being left to his own devices hasn’t been the best thing for Indiana. Yes, he’s been successful as an adventure archeologist, but as can be clearly seen from his spanning film stories, he has also had a lot of failures and only has come out on top in the end in the most chaotic fashion possible.
Now at the end of their search for the Grail, the Jones boys run into Nazi Grail hunters. In an attempt to get Indiana to get through the tests of the Grail for them, they shoot his father so that the only way to save him is through the healing power of the Grail. Indiana, using his father’s notes, figures out all the clues to get through to the Grail, relying on the intellect and knowledge that has gotten him through so far.
Then Indiana Jones finds himself at a great chasm. There’s only one way to cross it. He has to step forward. “It’s a leap of faith” as Indiana exasperatedly puts it.
For the first time in his career, Indiana Jones has to put his trust in something beyond himself or his own wits. Instead of being in control, he has to relinquish it.
So he takes the necessary step forward. He finds himself on a bridge with a texture so perfect it looks the same as the chasm below it. It’s thanks to this moment of relinquishing control that Indiana finds the Holy Grail. It’s thanks to trusting in something beyond himself, trusting in what he cannot fully see, that he succeeds.
Trust: that’s what Faith really is. The word itself means “trust”. And as we hear in Hebrews this morning, we do not trust in God for what we can see. We trust in God simply because of who God is, that God is one who is worthy of our trust.
We follow God not because of anything we can see. We don’t do so out of any promise we’ve received. We don’t even follow because there is any certain and definite proof. We follow our Lord because regardless of our ability to see, in spite of our ability to perceive, we know God and we know the Lord to be trustworthy.
Yet even though God is the one, the only one, in whom we can trust, we still all struggle to do it. We are all impatient when it comes to waiting for what God has to reveal to us. We despise not being in control.
God allows us to follow in our own ways. This is the subject of the Prophets, including Isaiah this morning. We can always go our own way, though doing so is not without consequence. It leads to the lack of control and chaos we see in the lives of stubborn men like Indiana Jones. Telling God to relinquish control leads to all those paths the Lord was taking us on falling away. It is what leads a small insignificant nation going from self rule to dividing, as Israel did into the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom of Judah. It leads from self rule to falling pray to the empires around, as we heard last week in Hosea with the fall of the Northern Kingdom to Assyria and the fall of Judah, who Isaiah speaks to today, to Babylon.
Trusting in ourselves only leads to disaster. We have only to see the stories of the Tanakh to know this. We have only to look at the chaotic lives of those who bow to no one but themselves to observe this truth. We have nothing but the failures of our own lives to see that our own control over our ourselves isn’t really control at all.
We need to trust in something trustworthy, and that is God. You may not always see it, but it is true. You may not even see our Lord around us, yet He is there. He is trustworthy, and if we can put our Faith in Him, we won’t have to fall like Ancient Israel. It’s not that we won’t have hardships along the way, though if we are patient in weathering the storm, we will make it through the hard times to the glorious end our Lord has planned for us.