On Coming Home: An Exhortation to High School Graduates

(Adapted from the 2024 Co-Operative of Alpena-Area Christian Homeschoolers Commencement Address)

When the church father Augustine begins his Confessions, he opens his heart to God in prayer: “You made us for yourself, O Lord,” he says. “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.” The human heart cannot find peace until completing a journey that finally leads to a true home. As you graduate, you make a start on your journey. This journey should end with you finding home.

But isn’t this a little odd? Aren’t you about to leave home, go to college, and commence your adult life? You are, to be sure, leaving your parents’ home. Your goal, however, must always to find home once more. For centuries, students and teachers alike have found that Augustine and Homer both have much to tell us about finding our way home. And this “homecoming” happens to us in a variety of ways. We journey to find a literal home and a community of friends. We journey to “come home” to ourselves—that is, to understand ourselves. And, ultimately, we journey to come home to God.

First, your journey requires finding home wherever you go. After being raised by your parents, you begin making a home for yourself. Making a home requires us to understand how we ought to live in a community. The prophet Micah tells God’s people: “The Lord has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Justice, kindness, and humility are not virtues lived in isolation. Wherever you learn—in the classroom, in your reading, in your conversations—you are learning for the sake of loving God and loving neighbor. You show yourself not only to be a faithful follower of Christ but also a responsible citizen in whatever city you find yourself.

If you are going to be a good neighbor, you ought to “come home” to yourself. In other words: know yourself. The opening of Homer’s Odyssey gives a glimpse at how, like each of us, Odysseus finds himself on the stormy seas: “Sing to me of the man… the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course… Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds, many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea, fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.” Your plans, like Odysseus’s ship, will be thrown off course. Know yourself and know how to sail through the journey of this life. How to do this? Read widely and explore with wonder; search for truth in every place just as Odysseus learned from his travels in “many cities of men.” And just as Odysseus faced monsters and temptations on his journey, so will you. The one-eyed Polyphemus and the enticing Calypso are found not only in the pages of Homer’s epic. Not only must you learn because learning is good, but you must learn that you might meet trials with a firmness of mind and a righteousness of spirit.

But life’s trials do not come solely from outside; they also arise within yourself. Coming home to yourself means being diligent in your continual fight with sin. Homer confirms the truth of Scripture when he puts the following words in the mouth of Zeus: “Men are so quick to blame the gods: they say that we devise their misery. But they themselves—in their depravity—design grief greater than the griefs that fate assigns.” In our fallen state, we design evil for ourselves. We still struggle with indwelling sin, even as children of Christ. “I do not do what I want to do,” says the apostle Paul, “but I do the very thing I hate.” As you begin a life independent of parents, now more than ever, you must prayerfully know yourself. Know how, with the strength of the Holy Spirit, to fight indwelling sin; know how, by the grace of God, to carry out justice, to love kindness, and to humbly walk with God. Preach the gospel to yourself daily and share in this life’s journey with fellow travelers.

Once Odysseus completes his journey to return to his homeland of Ithaca, he finds his house and his wife Penelope besieged by wicked men. Even after a journey back to his literal home, even after a journey to know and understand himself, Odysseus might fight to reclaim his home. But you, as believers in the Son of God, Christ Jesus, will not be forced to fight to lay claim to your home. Christ has done this for you, and you are but pilgrims, or sojourners, on your way to this already-won kingdom.

The writer of Hebrews tells us that “here we have no lasting city.” The city of man, the kingdoms of the world, will pass away. The writer goes on to remind the believers that “we seek the city that is to come.” Odysseus sought peace in his homeland of Ithaca, but you are called to seek the true and better Ithaca, the kingdom of God.

We, however, haven’t arrived at the heavenly city. You are about to begin the next leg of the journey. And this journey requires a lifelong education in whatever things are true, good, and beautiful. To see God at work in the world, to understand the truth of His world, and to live accordingly – these are the goals of education. You have the exciting opportunity—and the solemn responsibility—to do what is good, seek what is true, and love what is beautiful. In this way, you not only walk humbly with God, but you also display His glory to those around you.

And this brings us, finally, to the true and ultimate homecoming, the true end of our journey and of all education. “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do” (studying for exams, hanging out with friends, working a minimum wage job), “do it all to the glory of God.” As you live as sojourners on your way to the heavenly city, you are on the path to come home to God. In some ways, you carry heaven with you already. But, as Odysseus wandered the seas for ten years, you do indeed have a journey before your arrival at the city of God. If we return to Augustine’s Confessions, we find wisdom concerning this heavenly homecoming for which you must strive. In book four, he writes, “In you [God] our good abides forever, and when we turn away from it, we turn to evil. Let us come home at last to you, O Lord, for fear that we be lost. For in you our good abides and it has no blemish since it is yourself. Nor do we fear that there is no home to which we can return. We fell from it; but our home is your eternity and it does not fall because we are away.” Indeed, you, like Odysseus, will stumble in the journey, but trust that the home you have in God is unshakable.