Jesus At Twelve Years Old
When Jesus was twelve years old He went up to Jerusalem with His parents to celebrate Passover.
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Jesus At Twelve Years Old
When Jesus was twelve years old He went up to Jerusalem with His parents to celebrate Passover.
When his parents started home, Jesus remained at Jerusalem abiding in the Temple sitting with the rabbis, hearing them, and asking them questions.
This was not His “Bar Mitzvah” as some teach.
This ceremony did not start, and only here and there, until the late Middle Ages in Europe.
And be assured that Jesus was not asking the rabbis questions as an inquisitive child in order to learn.
For the rabbis were “astonished” at His understanding and His answers.
The “answers” Jesus gave came in the form of classic, Hebraic, proceeding questions.
As a Jewish child myself, in Hebrew School, this was a means of Jewish learning.
Put forth a simple question on the Bible, get an obvious answer.
Then pose the question again, this time with a paradox, and tweak the question.
This came up during a Shabbaton, a Sabbath discussion meal:
“Why did Moses sprinkle blood on the people before setting up the tabernacle?”
Someone answered, “To grant the people atonement for their sins.”
Then the paradox:
“Why then did Moses also sprinkle the tabernacle? Did the tabernacle sin against God so as also to need atonement?”
Everyone was stumped. (I’ll comment on this in a future Video.)
Perhaps Jesus put this ‘stumper’ to the rabbis as He later did to the Pharisees:
“What think ye of Messiah? Whose son is he?”
“The Son of David,” the Pharisees answered.
“How then,” replied Jesus, “doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool? If David then call him Lord, how is he his son?”
No one could answer.
The Orthodox Church can.
Both are true due to the incarnation.
As God, Jesus is David’s Lord.
As man, Jesus is David’s son.
For by the virgin birth by Mary, who with her adoptive husband Joseph was of the clan of David, God becomes David’s son and Lord.
Luke then relates that Mary and Joseph could not find Jesus in the company of their kinsfolk on their way home to Nazareth.
So they turned back to Jerusalem seeking Him.
After three days they find Jesus in the Temple in the midst of the rabbis.
Like a typical Jewish mother, Mary seems to insinuate guilt on the child’s part, complaining, “Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.”
Mary seems to address Jesus as a common human child, not as God as He also was, Who needed permission first to stay behind in Jerusalem.
Jesus turns the question around: “And how is it that you sought Me?”
As if to say, ‘Did you seek me as a human child bereft of your consent to stay behind?”
Then He cuts to the quick: “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?”
As saying, ‘My real parent is God the Father of Whom I was eternally begotten. It is His business I am in company with.’
This is heavy stuff.
Call it, ‘Christ consciousness.’
Better yet, ‘The hour of decision.’
Jesus—Who slowly manifested His timeless wisdom in sync with His human growth—here proclaims to Mary and Joseph who were amazed with incomprehension, His Messianic Mission.
But not quite yet.
Jesus goes home “subject” to Mary and Joseph, hiding His Godhead, until the time that ‘hour of decision’as God incarnate was to be acted upon.
My hour of decision came when I realized that Jesus—Who I was told in Hebrew School not to believe in—was the Jewish Messiah.
I knew I had to do something, I just didn’t know what.
So I remained “subject” to ’God’s providence’ until it was time for me to act.
This +BN talk brought some interesting questions into focus. I’ve wondered why the Virgin and St. Joseph went looking for Jesus… instead of asking God where to find Him. And why Jesus gave them such a seemingly snarky answer to his distraught parents when they found Him. I have an understanding for the latter now.
As an aside, the three days Sts. Mary and Joseph spent looking for Jesus may have been only a little over 24 hours.