For ten long years, the greatest hero of ancient Greek literature tries to find his way home.
Odysseus has led the Greeks to victory in the Trojan War. He now longs to head west, back across the Mediterranean, where he can finally rejoin his wife and son at their home on the island of Ithaca.
But according to The Odyssey, Homer’s sprawling epic, the god Neptune has been gravely offended by Odysseus. He throws obstacle after obstacle into the hero’s path, forcing Odysseus to confront the Sirens, the Lotus-Eaters, and the one-eyed Cyclops Polyphemus.
A deep yearning drives him forward. The Greeks called it nostos, “an overwhelming desire to return home.”
At one point Odysseus and his fellow travelers arrive on the island of Aeolus, the Greek god of wind. Aeolus listens sympathetically to the stories of their travels and agrees to offer a gift that only he can provide. It’s just a bag. But it’s a bag like no other.
Aeolus has gathered all the winds in the world and tied them up in a sack – all except for the one gentle breeze that will blow them straight home.
Now there is nothing that can stand in the way of their nostos – their long-delayed homecoming.
The boat carrying Odysseus and his comrades sails right to Ithaca. As night falls, they can even see the campfires dotting the ridges of their homeland. Overwhelmed with relief, Odysseus nods off (perhaps having read a recent morning reflection on the value of taking naps).
In this case, things do not go well. Odysseus’ companions have always wondered what’s really in Aeolus’ bag. Perhaps it’s gold and silver. Perhaps they should have a look for themselves.
While their captain slumbers, they open the bag – whereupon all the foul winds from the four corners of the earth come roaring out, blowing them right back to where they started on Aeolus’ island. This time the god is not amused. Olympus must really have it in for Odysseus. He refuses to help them a second time, sending them off to face yet another series of disasters in their own strength.
It takes Odysseus a whole decade to travel the distance that a modern-day cruise ship can cover in a few days. He finally staggers home.
You don’t need to know Greek to grasp that human beings of every generation feel a never-ending yearning to “go home” – to arrive in a world where everything is, at last, just as it should be.
In 1688, a young Swiss medical student named Johannes Hofer coined a word to describe the melancholy feelings experienced by soldiers fighting far away from home.
By combining nostos (“homecoming”) with the Greek word algos (“pain” or “ache”), Hofer came up with the word “nostalgia” – an almost physical ache to go home, or to go back to a happier past, or perhaps to go forward to reclaim something priceless that has somehow been lost.
People yearn for a world in which everything broken can finally been redeemed or repaired.
Does that mean Christians should be praying, “Beam me up, Jesus”? Is the hope of heaven just an escape route from the disappointment of the present world?
The apostle Paul has a different take:
“All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We’re also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance” (Romans 8:22-23, The Message).
Our yearning for heaven is a nostalgia for our true spiritual home – the new heavens and new earth that God is shaping even in the midst of so many things that seem to be going wrong.
It’s a new world that, by God’s grace, we ourselves can help bring about.
The gods of the Greek pantheon – that rowdy, unpredictable crowd of outsized egos and unbridled passions – were actually working against Odysseus. Most of them could have cared less if he ever set foot on Ithaca again.
But the one true God – the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of David and Solomon, of Isaiah and Jeremiah, of Peter and Paul and James, and of Jesus himself – is not fighting against you.
“If God is for us,” Paul asks a little further on in Romans, “who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31)
God is working even now to bring about the world for which our hearts truly ache.
And today will bring us one day closer to its reality.
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