Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?
Lk 2:41-52
G. B. CAIRD
To illustrate the thirty years of growth
which led to the climax of his baptism, Luke records but one incident.
At the age of twelve a Jewish boy became
bar mitzvah, a son of the Law, able to accept for himself the responsibilities
and obligations to which his parents had committed him by the rite of
circumcision. For Jesus this occasion was celebrated by a family visit to
Jerusalem for the Passover. When the seven-day festival was over, his parents
started for home along with a caravan of other Galilean pilgrims, not realizing
that Jesus was left behind.
The great city had laid its charm upon him,
and he was taking advantage of his opportunities to learn from the rabbis in
the temple courts, so utterly engrossed in the exciting new world of
intellectual adventure as to be oblivious to the consternation he was causing.
To Mary's mild rebuke he replied in words
of profound significance for our understanding of his later career. His parents
should have known where to look for him - in his Father's house. This
description of the temple betokens that the doctrine of the divine fatherhood,
long a tenet of Israel's faith, had become for him an intimate personal
experience.
Besides becoming a bar mitzvah he had
become intensely aware of being Son of God, and henceforth he was to live his
life not merely under the Law but under the higher authority of his filial
consciousness.
Luke's Gospel is more than the story of
what Jesus did and taught: it is also the story of what Jesus experienced. He
was, as the Epistle to the Hebrews has it, 'the pioneer of our salvation',
blazing a new trail for others to follow. It was his calling to explore to the
uttermost what it means to call God 'Father'.
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