The Odyssey’s Biggest Leap of Faith

If you’ve been awake this summer, you’re probably aware of the blockbuster hit film The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s ancient poem. Audiences and critics alike have their opinions and questions about The Odyssey. There are the “film bros” who obsess over IMAX cameras. Viewers debate which actors deserve to play which part. Homer scholars voice their concerns about the quality of the adaptation and how well it honors the source material.

I saw the film twice (in boring old standard format, no less!) and did not find myself all that interested in these questions. What I am interested in was what the film revealed. I am a firm believer that, regardless of the religious commitment of the filmmakers, all artistic endeavors reveal something true about humanity. So, what does The Odyssey reveal, especially to those of us who are leaders in churches or Christian communities?

The film is chock-full of ideas to unpack, including notions of time or memory or relationships. But on my second watch, I couldn’t stop thinking about one scene in particular: a lone Odysseus floating, unconscious, on a raft.

For context: the tale follows Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his men as they board ships headed for home. Their Greek army is victorious after a twenty-year war with Troy. Their journey back is far from straightforward, however, as they face external conflicts (a Cyclops, Circe the witch, stormy seas) that parallel their internal ones. Indeed, the world they occupied before was a world that relied on the concept of “Zeus’s law,” or the idea that all strangers are owed hospitality. Yet the Greeks use a wooden horse, a gift offered to the Trojans as a peace offering, to destroy and ravage their kingdom. Over the course of the film, Odysseus comes to realize, particularly through conversations with Athena, that the cost of their victory through the horse – his idea – was that Zeus’s law no longer binds society together.

Further, for his band of men who are ready to be home, Zeus’s law could not be further from their minds. Their all-consuming impulse drives them to shores where they desperately plunder and steal and battle foe after magical foe, losing every time but leaving chaos in their wake. Ultimately, in fulfillment of Circe’s word to him, only an amnesiac Odysseus is left alive out of the entire company, blearily recovering on the desolate Ogygia.

It is not difficult to make the connection to today’s current cultural tensions. Nolan’s script all but spells out for the viewer what connection she should make to the modern world (“Our age of bronze is collapsing”, says a contemplative Odysseus in one scene). David French, in his recent New York Times article, compares the staggering violation of Zeus’s law to today’s flagrant dismissal of the natural moral law. There are, in fact, major consequences to seeking total power or even some seemingly noble end with no regard to the cost.

All of us bear witness, and all the time, to people who are far more interested in letting the loyalty to their tribe, fear of the other, or the desire for total power and control guide their actions, rather than any convictions about the good. But the hardest pill to swallow for Christians, I think, is the ability to see this tendency in ourselves. In this story, it is not only the power-hungry suitors muddying the floors of Ithaca’s palace in Odysseus’s absence. No, Odysseus’s men are the mysterious, plundering, violent “sea people” of whom all kingdoms in the story live in fear.

I couldn’t help but think about the parallels with Moses leading the Israelites through the desert. Their journey away from the horrors of Egypt to a new life is meant to be a journey of trust in God’s power to deliver on God’s promises – yet even they perpetually doubt God.

It is not only the ancient Israelites but also centuries of church history and current Christians who suffer from doubt this way. These doubts are not only a matter of what we say we believe. They may creep up as a sense that the work we do, even good work for God, has been thankless or unsuccessful after decades of service. They can appear as discouragement that the world is just not what it used to be. We often have even legitimate needs – like the Israelites’ food and water – that await God’s provision. All understandable. Yet if we are not careful, if we do not reflect on ourselves, or allow ourselves to be evaluated by loving community, these postures toward the world embitter our hearts. They make room for more fear, and then, for a desire for control.

So how can any of us avoid this trap in our institutions, our churches, our communities?

As Christians, we have the ultimate model: the One who lays down his life for others. In Philippians 2, the Christ hymn reminds us that only through Christ’s self-emptying is he exalted; it is at the point of death, of humiliation, where he finds his greatest glory. Paul follows this hymn with an exhortation that it is not we who ultimately “will and act” but God who works in us. We need not fear the lack of control we have over the world or our circumstances. It is not up to us to reign: the God who reigns knows what God is doing.

In the scene I mentioned above, Odysseus is doing what Calypso tells him to do: to finally stop fighting, to give up control. To allow himself, despite his fear, to float out on a weak raft into the middle of the ocean and face the full force of the storm. Perhaps there is a word here for all of us facing storms so violent they feel like they will never end – and to remember who it was that calmed them before.

“Give up the fight, give up control and live. It is a leap of faith you haven't yet made, Odysseus.”