After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it... from Luke 2:41-52
Last time we thought about this famous incident when Jesus, as a twelve-year-old boy, was left behind in Jerusalem. He was discovered later by an anxious Joseph and Mary “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.”
I suggested that the incident highlights for us the genuine humanity of Jesus - he had to learn like any ordinary child. More widely, it can comfort us with the thought that when we are feeling at our weakest and most human, the man Jesus knows what we are going through.
But there’s a second thread too which there wasn’t room to go into: How, and when, did Jesus become aware of who he was?
I need to be careful! As I said earlier, there are things about Jesus’ life where God has not seen fit to tell us very much, and we are conscious of treading (I hope not trespassing!) on holy ground. But I must confess that from time to time I have found myself wondering just when he first realised that he really was, in a unique sense, the Son of God.
I imagine that the realisation must have dawned very slowly over the years of his boyhood, especially as he learned and reflected on the Old Testament scriptures. I wonder, for example, if soaking his mind in the extraordinary words of Isaiah 53 played a major part...
This chapter contains a vivid portrait of the mysterious person referred to by the prophet as “the servant of the Lord”. Somebody who is destined to “take up our pain and bear our suffering”. Somebody who was going to be “pierced for our transgressions, and crushed for our iniquities”. Somebody who would “bear the sins of many, and make intercession for the transgressors”...
Did Jesus suddenly think, with a gasp of amazement, “This is - me! This prophecy is mine to fulfil!”?
Could it be that that experience in the temple as a twelve-year old was the turning point? It was, after all, the time of his bar mitzvah, the point in a Jewish boy’s life when he became a fully-fledged “son of the Law”. (Could it even be that Isaiah 53 was the very passage he was asking those learned scholars about?)
We can’t know for sure. But as the gospels unfold, Jesus’ self-awareness becomes clear - you can look, for example, at Luke 10:22 or John 17:5, where, in prayer to his heavenly father, he speaks about “the glory I had with you before the world began”. Suddenly those striking words about “my Father’s house” take on an even deeper meaning.
Perhaps we just have to leave it there. But something much more down-to-earth also emerges from the story...
You might wonder if Jesus was a little rough with his parents in showing them no real sympathy in their anxiety - “Why are you so anxious? Surely you should have been able to guess where I would be?”
It could seem that way. But if he was, that fits with other occasions in his life when, in order to get his message across, he spoke quite sharply. The hard fact is this: Joseph and Mary had to learn what we all have to learn - that God comes first in all things, taking pride of place even over normal, loving human relationships.
Accepting that may be intensely painful. Think, for example, of the child brought up in a devout Muslim family and then drawn to Christ: how hard for that child; and how hard for the family. Or think of the Christian couple who are called by God to overseas missionary service, and have to explain their decision to parents who love them dearly but are not themselves believers - and who find it hard to accept.
What happened that day in the Jerusalem temple was an object-lesson for every generation of Christian people down through the centuries: when the Bible tells us that we are to “love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength” (Mark 12:30) it really does mean what it says.
Have we ever seriously grappled with not only the meaning of those words in a theoretical sense, but what they actually mean in practice for us today?
Having taken to heart these rather solemn thoughts, let’s not overlook a little detail that Luke gives us in verse 51: that when Jesus and his family returned to Nazareth he “was obedient to them.”
Yes, for him it was his heavenly Father above all, no doubt about that. But he did also obey the fifth commandment, “honouring” his earthly father and mother as well - just like a good Jewish boy!
Lord God, help me to love you with all my heart, my soul, my mind and my strength - while loving also my family and all my fellow human beings as I love myself. Amen.
Last time we thought about this famous incident when Jesus, as a twelve-year-old boy, was left behind in Jerusalem. He was discovered later by an anxious Joseph and Mary “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.”
I suggested that the incident highlights for us the genuine humanity of Jesus - he had to learn like any ordinary child. More widely, it can comfort us with the thought that when we are feeling at our weakest and most human, the man Jesus knows what we are going through.
But there’s a second thread too which there wasn’t room to go into: How, and when, did Jesus become aware of who he was?
I need to be careful! As I said earlier, there are things about Jesus’ life where God has not seen fit to tell us very much, and we are conscious of treading (I hope not trespassing!) on holy ground. But I must confess that from time to time I have found myself wondering just when he first realised that he really was, in a unique sense, the Son of God.
I imagine that the realisation must have dawned very slowly over the years of his boyhood, especially as he learned and reflected on the Old Testament scriptures. I wonder, for example, if soaking his mind in the extraordinary words of Isaiah 53 played a major part...
This chapter contains a vivid portrait of the mysterious person referred to by the prophet as “the servant of the Lord”. Somebody who is destined to “take up our pain and bear our suffering”. Somebody who was going to be “pierced for our transgressions, and crushed for our iniquities”. Somebody who would “bear the sins of many, and make intercession for the transgressors”...
Did Jesus suddenly think, with a gasp of amazement, “This is - me! This prophecy is mine to fulfil!”?
Could it be that that experience in the temple as a twelve-year old was the turning point? It was, after all, the time of his bar mitzvah, the point in a Jewish boy’s life when he became a fully-fledged “son of the Law”. (Could it even be that Isaiah 53 was the very passage he was asking those learned scholars about?)
We can’t know for sure. But as the gospels unfold, Jesus’ self-awareness becomes clear - you can look, for example, at Luke 10:22 or John 17:5, where, in prayer to his heavenly father, he speaks about “the glory I had with you before the world began”. Suddenly those striking words about “my Father’s house” take on an even deeper meaning.
Perhaps we just have to leave it there. But something much more down-to-earth also emerges from the story...
You might wonder if Jesus was a little rough with his parents in showing them no real sympathy in their anxiety - “Why are you so anxious? Surely you should have been able to guess where I would be?”
It could seem that way. But if he was, that fits with other occasions in his life when, in order to get his message across, he spoke quite sharply. The hard fact is this: Joseph and Mary had to learn what we all have to learn - that God comes first in all things, taking pride of place even over normal, loving human relationships.
Accepting that may be intensely painful. Think, for example, of the child brought up in a devout Muslim family and then drawn to Christ: how hard for that child; and how hard for the family. Or think of the Christian couple who are called by God to overseas missionary service, and have to explain their decision to parents who love them dearly but are not themselves believers - and who find it hard to accept.
What happened that day in the Jerusalem temple was an object-lesson for every generation of Christian people down through the centuries: when the Bible tells us that we are to “love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength” (Mark 12:30) it really does mean what it says.
Have we ever seriously grappled with not only the meaning of those words in a theoretical sense, but what they actually mean in practice for us today?
Having taken to heart these rather solemn thoughts, let’s not overlook a little detail that Luke gives us in verse 51: that when Jesus and his family returned to Nazareth he “was obedient to them.”
Yes, for him it was his heavenly Father above all, no doubt about that. But he did also obey the fifth commandment, “honouring” his earthly father and mother as well - just like a good Jewish boy!
Lord God, help me to love you with all my heart, my soul, my mind and my strength - while loving also my family and all my fellow human beings as I love myself. Amen.
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