Lovers Leap Series

I love the Indiana Jones movies. I think my all-time favorite will always be the first one, Raiders of the Lost Ark, but the third one, Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade, is almost as good. How many of you have seen it? Sean Connery (who played Indy’s father) was almost as gorgeous as Harrison Ford. I just saw it again a few weeks ago, and as usual watched it in a sort of schizophrenic state of mind, part of me just purely enjoying the story and the suspense, and the other part critically analyzing the theology of this retelling of the Holy Grail myth. Remember that the myth of the grail centers around the idea that there is a chalice, a cup, which caught Jesus’ blood at the crucifixion, will give eternal life to whomever finds it. Well, of course Jesus’ blood does give eternal life... but let’s leave the theology aside for just now. And we’ll also skip over all the witty exchanges between Connery & Ford, and wind up at the climax, heroes and villains and all, in a thousand year-old temple, with the Grail guarded by the usual booby-traps. The bad guys send minion after minion up the passageway but they all come rolling back down, headless. Somewhere in the melee Sean Connery gets mortally wounded, and the only way Indy can save him is by daring the gauntlet himself. Being virtuous as well as smart, he deciphers the clues and gets to the last obstacle, which is a bottomless chasm too wide to jump. The Grail is in a cave on the other side. The clue is something like “take the step of faith to receive the gift of life.”

And seeing nothing at all in front of him, and his father dying behind him, and the promise of life in front of him, Indy takes a step and finds something solid beneath his foot, and takes another, and lo and behold, it was all an optical illusion and there really was a solid rock bridge over the abyss.

That’s a pretty good illustration of what stepping out in faith is all about. There really was a bridge; it’s just that Indy couldn’t see it from where he was standing. And the clue was quite clear. And he’d already discovered that if he followed the clues he’d get where he was supposed to go.

And that’s kind of what Abram did, didn’t he, when he went down into Canaan chasing a rainbow promise that neither he nor anyone else could see - but Abram knew it must be out there because God had said so. So he went, and Paul tells us that this faith was reckoned to Abram as righteousness. That doesn’t mean, by the way, that Abram actually became righteous by believing God, it means that a credit was made to Abram’s celestial account just as if he really were righteous.

Most 20th century Americans think they’ll get to heaven because they’re nice people, law abiding, generous, honest, kind. (Or maybe just because they haven’t been convicted of any major felonies - the standards have been dropping lately.) And first century Jews thought they’d get to heaven because they were members of God’s covenant people and kept the rules he’d laid down for them in Moses’ time.

But Paul says not. Paul says the promise he made to Abraham - which was by this time understood to be salvation - was never, ever, earned. It was always a gift. No one - not even the most faithful and devout Jew - could ever demand it as a right.

At this point most of those same devout Jews in Paul’s audience would have been frothing at the mouth. Here they had been doing all the right things for all these years, just as God told them to, and how dare Paul suggest that it was all for nothing? They had done their part; was he suggesting that God wasn’t going to keep his side of the bargain?

Paul is saying, “It wasn’t a bargain. It was a promise.” God didn’t say to Abram, “Be good and I’ll reward you.” He just said, “I have something special for you down in Canaan.” And Abram believed him, and went to get it. Remember, Abram wasn’t righteous, certainly not by the standards of Paul’s day and not even by the somewhat more lenient ones of our own time. Abram lied to Pharaoh’s men, telling them that Sarah was his sister, not his wife, so that they wouldn’t kill him to get Sarah for Pharaoh’s harem. And no doubt Abram didn’t keep kosher and he certainly didn’t have a mezuzah on his tent-pole and to top it all off he wasn’t even circumcised! At least not until chapter 17.