Jesus at Jerusalem

125:0.1No in­ci­dent in all Je­sus’ event­ful earth ca­reer was more en­gag­ing, more hu­manly thrilling, than this, his first re­mem­bered visit to Je­ru­sa­lem. He was es­pe­cially stim­u­lated by the ex­pe­ri­ence of at­tend­ing the tem­ple dis­cus­sions by him­self, and it long stood out in his mem­ory as the great event of his later child­hood and early youth. This was his first op­por­tu­nity to en­joy a few days of in­de­pen­dent liv­ing, the ex­hil­a­ra­tion of go­ing and com­ing with­out re­straint and re­stric­tions. This brief pe­riod of undi­rected liv­ing, dur­ing the week fol­low­ing the Pass­over, was the first com­plete free­dom from re­spon­si­bil­ity he had ever en­joyed. And it was many years sub­se­quent to this be­fore he again had a like pe­riod of free­dom from all sense of re­spon­si­bil­ity, even for a short time.

125:0.2Women sel­dom went to the Pass­over feast at Je­ru­sa­lem; they were not re­quired to be pres­ent. Je­sus, how­ever, vir­tu­ally re­fused to go un­less his mother would ac­com­pany them. And when his mother de­cided to go, many other Naz­a­reth women were led to make the jour­ney, so that the Pass­over com­pany con­tained the largest num­ber of women, in pro­por­tion to men, ever to go up to the Pass­over from Naz­a­reth. Ever and anon, on the way to Je­ru­sa­lem, they chanted the one hun­dred and thir­ti­eth Psalm.

125:0.3From the time they left Naz­a­reth un­til they reached the sum­mit of the Mount of Olives, Je­sus ex­pe­ri­enced one long stress of ex­pec­tant an­tic­i­pa­tion. All through a joy­ful child­hood he had rev­er­ently heard of Je­ru­sa­lem and its tem­ple; now he was soon to be­hold them in re­al­ity. From the Mount of Olives and from the out­side, on closer in­spec­tion, the tem­ple had been all and more than Je­sus had ex­pected; but when he once en­tered its sa­cred por­tals, the great dis­il­lu­sion­ment be­gan.

125:0.4In com­pany with his par­ents Je­sus passed through the tem­ple precincts on his way to join that group of new sons of the law who were about to be con­se­crated as cit­i­zens of Is­rael. He was a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed by the gen­eral de­meanor of the tem­ple throngs, but the first great shock of the day came when his mother took leave of them on her way to the women’s gallery. It had never oc­curred to Je­sus that his mother was not to ac­com­pany him to the con­se­cra­tion cer­e­monies, and he was thor­oughly in­dig­nant that she was made to suf­fer from such un­just dis­crim­i­na­tion. While he strongly re­sented this, aside from a few re­marks of protest to his fa­ther, he said noth­ing. But he thought, and thought deeply, as his ques­tions to the scribes and teach­ers a week later dis­closed.

125:0.5He passed through the con­se­cra­tion rit­u­als but was dis­ap­pointed by their per­func­tory and rou­tine na­tures. He missed that per­sonal in­ter­est which char­ac­ter­ized the cer­e­monies of the syn­a­gogue at Naz­a­reth. He then re­turned to greet his mother and pre­pared to ac­com­pany his fa­ther on his first trip about the tem­ple and its var­i­ous courts, gal­leries, and cor­ri­dors. The tem­ple precincts could ac­com­mo­date over two hun­dred thou­sand wor­shipers at one time, and while the vast­ness of these build­ings—in com­par­i­son with any he had ever seen—greatly im­pressed his mind, he was more in­trigued by the con­tem­pla­tion of the spir­i­tual sig­nif­i­cance of the tem­ple cer­e­monies and their as­so­ci­ated wor­ship.

125:0.6Though many of the tem­ple rit­u­als very touch­ingly im­pressed his sense of the beau­ti­ful and the sym­bolic, he was al­ways dis­ap­pointed by the ex­pla­na­tion of the real mean­ings of these cer­e­monies which his par­ents would of­fer in an­swer to his many search­ing in­quiries. Je­sus sim­ply would not ac­cept ex­pla­na­tions of wor­ship and re­li­gious de­vo­tion which in­volved be­lief in the wrath of God or the anger of the Al­mighty. In fur­ther dis­cus­sion of these ques­tions, af­ter the con­clu­sion of the tem­ple visit, when his fa­ther be­came mildly in­sis­tent that he ac­knowl­edge ac­cep­tance of the or­tho­dox Jew­ish be­liefs, Je­sus turned sud­denly upon his par­ents and, look­ing ap­peal­ingly into the eyes of his fa­ther, said: “My fa­ther, it can­not be true—the Fa­ther in heaven can­not so re­gard his erring chil­dren on earth. The heav­enly Fa­ther can­not love his chil­dren less than you love me. And I well know, no mat­ter what un­wise thing I might do, you would never pour out wrath upon me nor vent anger against me. If you, my earthly fa­ther, pos­sess such hu­man re­flec­tions of the Di­vine, how much more must the heav­enly Fa­ther be filled with good­ness and over­flow­ing with mercy. I refuse to be­lieve that my Fa­ther in heaven loves me less than my fa­ther on earth.”

125:0.7When Joseph and Mary heard these words of their first-born son, they held their peace. And never again did they seek to change his mind about the love of God and the mer­ci­ful­ness of the Fa­ther in heaven.