Jesus at Jerusalem

125:6.1Je­sus was strangely un­mind­ful of his earthly par­ents; even at break­fast, when Laz­a­rus’s mother re­marked that his par­ents must be about home by that time, Je­sus did not seem to com­pre­hend that they would be some­what wor­ried about his hav­ing lin­gered be­hind.

125:6.2Again he jour­neyed to the tem­ple, but he did not pause to med­i­tate at the brow of Oli­vet. In the course of the morn­ing’s dis­cus­sions much time was de­voted to the law and the proph­ets, and the teach­ers were as­ton­ished that Je­sus was so fa­mil­iar with the Scrip­tures, in He­brew as well as Greek. But they were amazed not so much by his knowl­edge of truth as by his youth.

125:6.3At the af­ter­noon con­fer­ence they had hardly be­gun to an­swer his ques­tion re­lat­ing to the pur­pose of prayer when the leader in­vited the lad to come for­ward and, sit­ting be­side him, bade him state his own views re­gard­ing prayer and wor­ship.

125:6.4The evening be­fore, Je­sus’ par­ents had heard about this strange youth who so deftly sparred with the ex­pounders of the law, but it had not oc­curred to them that this lad was their son. They had about de­cided to jour­ney out to the home of Zach­a­rias as they thought Je­sus might have gone thither to see Eliz­a­beth and John. Think­ing Zach­a­rias might per­haps be at the tem­ple, they stopped there on their way to the City of Ju­dah. As they strolled through the courts of the tem­ple, imag­ine their sur­prise and amaze­ment when they rec­og­nized the voice of the miss­ing lad and be­held him seated among the tem­ple teach­ers.

125:6.5Joseph was speech­less, but Mary gave vent to her long-pent-up fear and anx­i­ety when, rush­ing up to the lad, now stand­ing to greet his as­ton­ished par­ents, she said: “My child, why have you treated us like this? It is now more than three days that your fa­ther and I have searched for you sor­row­ing. What­ever pos­sessed you to desert us?” It was a tense mo­ment. All eyes were turned on Je­sus to hear what he would say. His fa­ther looked re­prov­ingly at him but said noth­ing.

125:6.6It should be re­mem­bered that Je­sus was sup­posed to be a young man. He had fin­ished the reg­u­lar school­ing of a child, had been rec­og­nized as a son of the law, and had re­ceived con­se­cra­tion as a cit­i­zen of Is­rael. And yet his mother more than mildly up­braided him be­fore all the peo­ple as­sem­bled, right in the midst of the most se­ri­ous and sub­lime ef­fort of his young life, thus bring­ing to an in­glo­ri­ous ter­mi­na­tion one of the great­est op­por­tu­ni­ties ever to be granted him to func­tion as a teacher of truth, a preacher of righ­teous­ness, a re­vealer of the lov­ing char­ac­ter of his Fa­ther in heaven.

125:6.7But the lad was equal to the oc­ca­sion. When you take into fair con­sid­er­a­tion all the fac­tors which com­bined to make up this sit­u­a­tion, you will be bet­ter pre­pared to fathom the wis­dom of the boy’s re­ply to his mother’s un­in­tended re­buke. Af­ter a mo­ment’s thought, Je­sus an­swered his mother, say­ing: “Why is it that you have so long sought me? Would you not ex­pect to find me in my Fa­ther’s house since the time has come when I should be about my Fa­ther’s busi­ness?”

125:6.8Ev­ery­one was as­ton­ished at the lad’s man­ner of speak­ing. Silently they all with­drew and left him stand­ing alone with his par­ents. Pres­ently the young man re­lieved the em­bar­rass­ment of all three when he qui­etly said: “Come, my par­ents, none has done aught but that which he thought best. Our Fa­ther in heaven has or­dained these things; let us de­part for home.”

125:6.9In si­lence they started out, ar­riv­ing at Jeri­cho for the night. Only once did they pause, and that on the brow of Oli­vet, when the lad raised his staff aloft and, quiv­er­ing from head to foot un­der the surg­ing of in­tense emo­tion, said: “O Je­ru­sa­lem, Je­ru­sa­lem, and the peo­ple thereof, what slaves you are—sub­servient to the Ro­man yoke and vic­tims of your own tra­di­tions—but I will re­turn to cleanse yon­der tem­ple and de­liver my peo­ple from this bond­age!”

125:6.10On the three days’ jour­ney to Naz­a­reth Je­sus said lit­tle; nei­ther did his par­ents say much in his pres­ence. They were truly at a loss to un­der­stand the con­duct of their first-born son, but they did trea­sure in their hearts his say­ings, even though they could not fully com­pre­hend their mean­ings.

125:6.11Upon reach­ing home, Je­sus made a brief state­ment to his par­ents, as­sur­ing them of his af­fec­tion and im­ply­ing that they need not fear he would again give any oc­ca­sion for their suf­fer­ing anx­i­ety be­cause of his con­duct. He con­cluded this mo­men­tous state­ment by say­ing: “While I must do the will of my Fa­ther in heaven, I will also be obe­di­ent to my fa­ther on earth. I will await my hour.”

125:6.12Though Je­sus, in his mind, would many times refuse to con­sent to the well-in­ten­tioned but mis­guided ef­forts of his par­ents to dic­tate the course of his think­ing or to es­tab­lish the plan of his work on earth, still, in ev­ery man­ner con­sis­tent with his ded­i­ca­tion to the do­ing of his Par­a­dise Fa­ther’s will, he did most grace­fully con­form to the de­sires of his earthly fa­ther and to the us­ages of his fam­ily in the flesh. Even when he could not con­sent, he would do ev­ery­thing pos­si­ble to con­form. He was an artist in the mat­ter of ad­just­ing his ded­i­ca­tion to duty to his obli­ga­tions of fam­ily loy­alty and so­cial ser­vice.

125:6.13Joseph was puz­zled, but Mary, as she re­flected on these ex­pe­ri­ences, gained com­fort, even­tu­ally view­ing his ut­ter­ance on Oli­vet as pro­phetic of the Mes­sianic mis­sion of her son as Is­rael’s de­liv­erer. She set to work with re­newed en­ergy to mold his thoughts into pa­tri­otic and na­tion­al­is­tic chan­nels and en­listed the ef­forts of her brother, Je­sus’ fa­vorite un­cle; and in ev­ery other way did the mother of Je­sus ad­dress her­self to the task of prepar­ing her first-born son to as­sume the lead­er­ship of those who would re­store the throne of David and for­ever cast off the gen­tile yoke of po­lit­i­cal bond­age.