I saw Christopher Nolan’s film version of The Odyssey—it’s three hours long, but the time goes by quickly! If you’ve never read Homer’s epic poem (as I hadn’t), the movie conveys some of the scope and power of this great story..

Matt Damon plays the main character, Odysseus, as a soulful warrior. As the story unfolds, Odysseus mourns the countless deaths he has caused in battle and regrets the duplicity of his famous military trick—hiding soldiers inside a wooden horse in order to defeat the Trojans and destroy the city of Troy. An ingenious and brave leader, Damon’s Odysseus also broods over the “law of Zeus,” which commands respect for all human beings, something Odysseus knows he has failed to do.

As several commentators have pointed out, this version of Odysseus departs from Homer and the classical traditions of Greece and edges toward a Biblical vision. Nolan, the director, might well have felt he needed to make this revision so that modern viewers could identify with Odysseus.

The ancient world would have had few of the scruples expressed by Odysseus in the film. Ancient Greek and Roman societies celebrated the warrior virtues—strength, valor, honor, and the glory of military triumph. They assumed that the strong dominate the weak, and that the weak serve the strong. As one ancient historian put it, “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” That’s just how the world works. 

Leaders of the ancient world would have agreed with the presidential adviser who recently explained US policy to a CNN reporter: “We live in a world . . .  that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” 

It took a revolution in morality for an alternative worldview to emerge. Living on the other side of that revolution, we tend to assume that the exercise of power must be judged by moral norms of justice. We seek to listen to the voice of victims and we regard compassion for those who suffer as the essence of morality. 

To the extent we share those views, it is because we are shaped by centuries of Christians preaching, teaching, and meditating on the Gospel stories, which turned the world upside down with teachings like “Love your enemies” and “The last will be first and the first will be last.” 

The beginnings of this revolution can be traced to this week’s Gospel reading, in which Jesus discloses that he, the very Son of God, will become one of the least in the world. He “must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised.” God’s Son will himself become a victim of those in power before he is raised in glory. This was an outrageous idea to the ancient mind.

The belief that the Son of God suffered for the truth, and that those in power can be massively wrong, has transformed the way the world thinks about what power is for, and whose side God might be on. 

See you in church,

Pastor David