Oikophilia is Iēsouphilia

NOTHING IS as debilitating as homelessness. Home is where the heart is. Not to have a home is to have one’s heart ripped out. Nothing is worse than being homeless, for nothing is worse than losing one’s heart. To be uprooted and displaced means to be removed from life itself.

Advent reminds us that all of us are homeless. Israel is a vine, Psalm 80 explains, which God carefully planted in the promised land. After an initial period of flourishing (“The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches. It sent out its branches to the sea and its shoots to the River.”)—God gave his vineyard over to its enemies: “Why then have you broken down its walls, so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit? The boar from the forest ravages it, and all that move in the field feed on it.” God’s people deported and the vineyard destroyed, the home is gone.

“You have hidden Your face from us,” laments Isaiah, “and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities” (Is. 64:7). “Make Your name known to Your adversaries … that the nations might tremble at Your presence!” (64:2). Just as in Psalm 80, so in Isaiah 64, God’s people are in Babylon. They have lost their home. They have lost their heart. Both the psalmist and prophet cry out to God from the excruciating pain of homelessness.

The longing for a particular place is palpable in the cries of Asaph and Isaiah. But both the psalmist and the prophet urge the exiles to look for more than simply a return to the physical plot of land from which they have been banished. If the saying is true—“the home is where the heart is”—then Jesus Himself is our true home. We are home when Jesus shows His face to us.

“Let Your face shine, that we may be saved” is the repeated refrain of Psalm 80. “Turn again, O God of hosts! Look down from heaven, and see” (80:14). “Rend the heavens and come down,” cries the prophet (Is. 64:1). “You have hidden Your face from us” (64:7). “Please look, we are all Your people” (64:9). We are home when Jesus shows His face to us. For Christians, oikophilia (love of home) is Iēsouphilia (love of Jesus).

Pope Benedict XVI, in his book Jesus of Nazareth, explains that the “place” where the cloud took Jesus in His Ascension is “God’s right hand.” Asking what this expression means, the pope comments: “It does not refer to some distant cosmic space, where God has, as it were, set up His throne and given Jesus a place beside the throne. God is not in one space alongside other spaces.” The longing of Christians in exile is not primarily for physical place of security. Our longing is fulfilled when we see Jesus coming in clouds with power and glory (cf. Mk. 13:26).

At no time of the Christian year do we experience our homelessness more acutely than at Advent. Holding out for Christmas, we cry out for Jesus to end our exile—to be our final home.

*Lectionary Readings for the first Sunday of Advent: Ps. 80; Is. 64:1–9; 1 Cor. 1:3–9; Mk. 13:24–37

**Hans Boersma is Saint Benedict Servants of Christ Professor of Ascetical Theology at Nashotah House Theological Seminary.