Jesus at Jerusalem

125:2.1Five Naz­a­reth fam­i­lies were guests of, or as­so­ciates with, the fam­ily of Si­mon of Beth­any in the cel­e­bra­tion of the Pass­over, Si­mon hav­ing pur­chased the paschal lamb for the com­pany. It was the slaugh­ter of these lambs in such enor­mous num­bers that had so af­fected Je­sus on his tem­ple visit. It had been the plan to eat the Pass­over with Mary’s rel­a­tives, but Je­sus per­suaded his par­ents to ac­cept the in­vi­ta­tion to go to Beth­any.

125:2.2That night they as­sem­bled for the Pass­over rites, eat­ing the roasted flesh with un­leav­ened bread and bit­ter herbs. Je­sus, be­ing a new son of the covenant, was asked to re­count the ori­gin of the Pass­over, and this he well did, but he some­what dis­con­certed his par­ents by the in­clu­sion of nu­mer­ous re­marks mildly re­flect­ing the im­pres­sions made on his youth­ful but thought­ful mind by the things which he had so re­cently seen and heard. This was the be­gin­ning of the seven-day cer­e­monies of the feast of the Pass­over.

125:2.3Even at this early date, though he said noth­ing about such mat­ters to his par­ents, Je­sus had be­gun to turn over in his mind the pro­pri­ety of cel­e­brat­ing the Pass­over with­out the slaugh­tered lamb. He felt as­sured in his own mind that the Fa­ther in heaven was not pleased with this spec­ta­cle of sac­ri­fi­cial of­fer­ings, and as the years passed, he be­came in­creas­ingly de­ter­mined some­day to es­tab­lish the cel­e­bra­tion of a blood­less Pass­over.

125:2.4Je­sus slept very lit­tle that night. His rest was greatly dis­turbed by re­volt­ing dreams of slaugh­ter and suf­fer­ing. His mind was dis­traught and his heart torn by the in­con­sis­ten­cies and ab­sur­di­ties of the the­ol­ogy of the whole Jew­ish cer­e­mo­nial sys­tem. His par­ents like­wise slept lit­tle. They were greatly dis­con­certed by the events of the day just ended. They were com­pletely up­set in their own hearts by the lad’s, to them, strange and de­ter­mined at­ti­tude. Mary be­came ner­vously ag­i­tated dur­ing the fore part of the night, but Joseph re­mained calm, though he was equally puz­zled. Both of them feared to talk frankly with the lad about these prob­lems, though Je­sus would gladly have talked with his par­ents if they had dared to en­cour­age him.

125:2.5The next day’s ser­vices at the tem­ple were more ac­cept­able to Je­sus and did much to re­lieve the un­pleas­ant mem­o­ries of the pre­vi­ous day. The fol­low­ing morn­ing young Laz­a­rus took Je­sus in hand, and they be­gan a sys­tem­atic ex­plo­ration of Je­ru­sa­lem and its en­vi­rons. Be­fore the day was over, Je­sus dis­cov­ered the var­i­ous places about the tem­ple where teach­ing and ques­tion con­fer­ences were in prog­ress; and aside from a few vis­its to the holy of holies to gaze in won­der as to what re­ally was be­hind the veil of sep­a­ra­tion, he spent most of his time about the tem­ple at these teach­ing con­fer­ences.

125:2.6Through­out the Pass­over week, Je­sus kept his place among the new sons of the com­mand­ment, and this meant that he must seat him­self out­side the rail which seg­re­gated all per­sons who were not full cit­i­zens of Is­rael. Be­ing thus made con­scious of his youth, he re­frained from ask­ing the many ques­tions which surged back and forth in his mind; at least he re­frained un­til the Pass­over cel­e­bra­tion had ended and these re­stric­tions on the newly con­se­crated youths were lifted.

125:2.7On Wednes­day of the Pass­over week, Je­sus was per­mit­ted to go home with Laz­a­rus to spend the night at Beth­any. This evening, Laz­a­rus, Martha, and Mary heard Je­sus dis­cuss things tem­po­ral and eter­nal, hu­man and di­vine, and from that night on they all three loved him as if he had been their own brother.

125:2.8By the end of the week, Je­sus saw less of Laz­a­rus since he was not el­i­gi­ble for ad­mis­sion to even the outer cir­cle of the tem­ple dis­cus­sions, though he at­tended some of the pub­lic talks de­liv­ered in the outer courts. Laz­a­rus was the same age as Je­sus, but in Je­ru­sa­lem youths were sel­dom ad­mit­ted to the con­se­cra­tion of sons of the law un­til they were a full thir­teen years of age.

125:2.9Again and again, dur­ing the Pass­over week, his par­ents would find Je­sus sit­ting off by him­self with his youth­ful head in his hands, pro­foundly think­ing. They had never seen him be­have like this, and not know­ing how much he was con­fused in mind and trou­bled in spirit by the ex­pe­ri­ence through which he was pass­ing, they were sorely per­plexed; they did not know what to do. They wel­comed the pass­ing of the days of the Pass­over week and longed to have their strangely act­ing son safely back in Naz­a­reth.

125:2.10Day by day Je­sus was think­ing through his prob­lems. By the end of the week he had made many ad­just­ments; but when the time came to re­turn to Naz­a­reth, his youth­ful mind was still swarm­ing with per­plex­i­ties and be­set by a host of unan­swered ques­tions and un­solved prob­lems.

125:2.11Be­fore Joseph and Mary left Je­ru­sa­lem, in com­pany with Je­sus’ Naz­a­reth teacher they made def­i­nite ar­range­ments for Je­sus to re­turn when he reached the age of fif­teen to be­gin his long course of study in one of the best-known academies of the rab­bis. Je­sus ac­com­pa­nied his par­ents and teacher on their vis­its to the school, but they were all dis­tressed to ob­serve how in­dif­fer­ent he seemed to all they said and did. Mary was deeply pained at his re­ac­tions to the Je­ru­sa­lem visit, and Joseph was pro­foundly per­plexed at the lad’s strange re­marks and un­usual con­duct.

125:2.12Af­ter all, Pass­over week had been a great event in Je­sus’ life. He had en­joyed the op­por­tu­nity of meet­ing scores of boys about his own age, fel­low can­di­dates for the con­se­cra­tion, and he uti­lized such con­tacts as a means of learn­ing how peo­ple lived in Mes­o­po­ta­mia, Tur­kes­tan, and Parthia, as well as in the Far-West­ern prov­inces of Rome. He was al­ready fairly con­ver­sant with the way in which the youth of Egypt and other re­gions near Pales­tine grew up. There were thou­sands of young peo­ple in Je­ru­sa­lem at this time, and the Naz­a­reth lad per­son­ally met, and more or less ex­ten­sively in­ter­viewed, more than one hun­dred and fifty. He was par­tic­u­larly in­ter­ested in those who hailed from the Far-East­ern and the re­mote West­ern coun­tries. As a re­sult of these con­tacts the lad be­gan to en­ter­tain a de­sire to travel about the world for the pur­pose of learn­ing how the var­i­ous groups of his fel­low men toiled for their liveli­hood.