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In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indy finds himself forced by the Nazis, to go through the trials to find the Holy Grail. In the balance hangs his father’s life, and only the Grail can save his dad.
Indy makes it through all the trials using his knowledge and insight. All but the final one.
For the last trial, he looks over a looming chasm. He sees the entrance to the grail on the other side, but no discernible way to cross it.
Indy pauses, not sure what to do. He looks at his father’s notes, but only sees the picture of a knight, gliding by with nothing but the power of his belief. His friends, all the way at the start of their path, ask him to hurry. Things don’t look so good for his father.
At this point Indy sighs saying simply, “it’s a leap of faith.” His wits and reason, the very things, the only things, Indy has ever relied on won’t help him now. So he closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and puts his leg forward.
Instead of falling to his doom, Indy finds himself on solid ground. As the camera angle tilts, we see that Indy is on a bridge, designed so that it is invisible from the angle of the entrance. After marveling at what has happened, he makes his way to the other side to receive his reward.
In that moment, Indy had to trust in something beyond himself. He had to trust that his father’s notes were right. He had to trust that somehow his senses and reason were wrong and that he would only succeed by listening to the wisdom of those before, trusting in a leap of faith.
That is all Faith is. Faith is Trust. That’s the very meaning of the word. When we speak about faith, what we are really saying is that we are trusting in God.
It’s not our smarts or wisdom, our brains or brawn that will get us through. It is not even our ability to do good, to be good that will save us. What will save us is total and unbending Trust in God. What will get us to our reward, like Indy with his, is trusting in God to guide us there.
All of our lessons point to this Trust today. Abraham, when he was still only known as Abram, at 75 years old is called by God to leave his home, his father’s house, and everything is known. He is told that in doing so, God will make him into a great nation.
And Abraham does it. He leaves it all behind and takes only his wife (and his nephew) into the great unknown that God has asked him to travel.
It’s not what Abraham did that made him right with God. As we see through this journey in Genesis, even in our own reading just two weeks from now, Abraham doesn’t always do what is right. He does not always act as he should, or as any of us should. Abraham is, as Paul reminds us us today in Romans, made righteous by Faith. It is Abraham’s Trust in God that saves him. It is what will save us as well.
We see this same Trust in the Gospel today. Matthew does not hesitate to follow Jesus when called, though he is a tax collector who would have been reviled by the people in Jesus’ day. Tax collectors, to make a living, would have had to add onto the taxes gathered from others as assigned by Rome in order to have their own cut of the money. Rome, in fact, encouraged this add on. Some were very greedy with what they asked, but no one could call them out to those in authority as they could, by law, do so. Tax collectors were thus viewed as despicable sinners, yet when called, Matthew does not hesitate to answer Jesus and follow Him. His Faith, not works, are what saved him.
Even the woman with the hemorrhage shows her great Trust in the Lord. She trusts so fervently that when Jesus passes her, she believes that just touching His coat, even just the fringe of His coat, will heal her. As Jesus tells her, it is her Faith, her Trust, that saves her.
What saves us is trusting in God, following the Lord. If we trust in God and follow God’s path, no matter where it may take us or how long it will take, we will come out better in the end. After all, what else do we have to Trust?
Indy certainly came to this kind of trust. While he trusts his intuition and cleverness to get him out of danger, that same intuition and cleverness is often what gets him into trouble in the first place. His smarts and skills certainly couldn’t have gotten him past the leap of faith on their own. He needed help. He needed to trust in something beyond himself.
The same is true with us. Only our Trust in the Lord can save us. We can never be good on our own, though we can be good if we Trust in the path God would have us follow. Our own deeds cannot save us, but they can be good if they are the ones God wishes us to perform. The only way we can be decent and good is if we Trust what God has to tell us. We can only move forward if we Trust God’s Two Great Commandments: to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourself.
Our Psalm tells us that “Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord!” This was written by and for the Israelites, the very People God had chosen to follow the Lord. For us, we might see it as a warning, for look at what happened to God’s People when they stopped following their Lord. None of us, whether as individuals or as groups, can claim to be better than the Israelites, whether in heights of their Faith or in the depths of their rejection of God’s ways. To say otherwise is to disregard the Truth. To say otherwise is to show we have neither plumped the depths of Scripture nor full examined the trials and tribulations of our own lives.
Fortunately for us, and for the Israelites, God doesn’t choose based on our goodness. To be the Lord’s, we have to Trust in the Lord. We have to put aside all other things that will ultimately let us down, even our own smarts and skills. The only thing we can rely on is the Lord. If we want to show that we rely on God, if we want to demonstrate our Trust in Jesus, then we have to show that we will follow God. We have to be willing to take what, as we learned this Easter Season, can be the harder, more difficult path. We have to be willing to know that only Trust in God can save us, that only Trust in God can make us good, and that only Trust in God can allow us to truly love the Lord as well as our neighbor as ourself.
Trust in God is all we have. Trust in God is all we need.