DAY 294 - And When Jesus Was Twelve Years Old

Luke 2:41-52 (NIV) ⁴¹ Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. ⁴² When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. ⁴³ After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. ⁴⁴ Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. ⁴⁵ When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. ⁴⁶ After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. ⁴⁷ Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. ⁴⁸ When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” ⁴⁹ “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” ⁵⁰ But they did not understand what he was saying to them.

This story in Luke tells us a lot about the early life of Jesus. He was twelve, too young to experience Bar Mitzvah, to become a son of the Law. The story also tells us that Jesus was intellectually sharp and spiritually perceptive. We learn from the story that Jesus was from a good Jewish home and was raised by some very typical, human parents, but, these are not the point of the story.

“Why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” That is the point of the story, an early hint that Jesus knew something special about God. There were hints in the Hebrew Scriptures that God was a Father, but Jesus claimed that to know God as a Father is to know the heart and soul of what God is really like.

And yet, there was resistance to God as Father then and there is resistance now. There is the resistance of religious idealism, believing that to see God as Father is too small, too limited a way to understand God. There is a resistance to those within the Christian faith who reject the Fatherhood of God in favor of a more beneficent Grandfather God. And there is the resistance of some in the Feminist Movement who see the Fatherhood of God as part of a male dominated theology, a criticism that is difficult to deny. But, it is also difficult to deny that the Fatherhood of God was at the heart of Jesus’ faith and life. We are not likely to have the kind of life Jesus had unless we have the kind of relationship to God that Jesus had. And here is the second point of this story.

This story tells us that we do not learn about the Fatherhood of God simply by listening to the teaching of Jesus. The Rabbis were amazed at His teaching. Mary and Joseph were astonished at what He said, but no one understood simply by listening. If we only listen to the teaching of Jesus, we may agree or disagree. We may accept or reject. If we simply listen to the teaching of Jesus we will treat it simply as one brand of truth among many ideas and ideals. But we will not discover the vital sense of Fatherhood that Jesus came to give.

We learn by submitting our life to Him, not simply by listening to Him teach. For the one thing that keeps us from knowing God as a Father is not our ignorance, but our stubbornness, not our desire to be tolerant of truth but to be in control and in charge. The shocking news of this story is that we discover the Fatherhood of God by subjecting our life to the Son. 

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope January 1, 1995

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)