Incredible That It Happened
Incredible That It Happened
The second scene I want to bring before us is told in Luke’s Gospel:
Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. 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.”
“Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he was saying to them. (2:41–50 NIV)
His parents had gone through all the ceremonial requirements and were heading home. It is ironic to me that it was Passover time, the time when the lambs were sacrificed for the forgiveness of sin, the foreshadowing of the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus himself. I wonder what questions Jesus asked these intellectuals. We are told they were amazed. It wasn’t until dusk on the first day of their journey home that his parents realized Jesus wasn’t with them. This could easily have happened. These were times when family and friends traveled together in caravans, and it was a very festive time for the nation. One can only imagine how heartsick and frantic Mary and Joseph must have been as they hurried back to Jerusalem. Not until after three days of increasingly desperate searching did they finally find Jesus in the temple, which was actually where they had last seen him.
Their immediate reaction was to reprimand him… If you are a parent, I’m sure you can understand how they were feeling. “Why were you searching for me?” he asked them. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” And the Scripture tells us they didn’t understand why he said what he did and what exactly he meant by it.
This is an amazing question for him to have asked them: “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” Deepak Chopra’s thesis that Jesus attained “God-consciousness” is just wishful thinking on his part. It is evident from this passage that Jesus early on knew who he was. Whether it was at his baptism by John the Baptist, at the wedding in Cana where he turned water into wine, or at the seashore where he called his disciples; whether it was when he cleansed the temple of that which profaned it or when he stood before the high priests at his mock trial or before Pontius Pilate; he knew who he was. In fact, when he overturned the tables of hucksters and peddlers of religion who were using the temple as a hangout for money-making crooks exploiting those beguiled by mere ceremony, he used the same expression: “my Father’s house.”
This is not a “higher consciousness” he is referring to. This is a literal, physical place of prayer and worship that he uniquely and assuredly calls “my Father’s house.” It is interesting that when he taught his disciples to pray, he began with “Our Father,” but when he cleansed the temple, he referred to it as “my Father’s House.”
New Age Spirituality keeps losing Jesus because it reduces him to just another voice and just another teacher or master. No other claimant referred to the temple in the first person singular. This was a house of prayer for all nations. But it was also the place where God had said he would meet with them as a community. The boy Jesus was lost in the very place where he was found. I shall say more on this later and on the fault of Christendom at large for this great and costly loss.