The Adolescent Years

127:2.1At about this time there was con­sid­er­able ag­i­ta­tion, es­pe­cially at Je­ru­sa­lem and in Judea, in fa­vor of re­bel­lion against the pay­ment of taxes to Rome. There was com­ing into ex­is­tence a strong na­tion­al­ist party, pres­ently to be called the Zealots. The Zealots, un­like the Phar­isees, were not will­ing to await the com­ing of the Mes­siah. They pro­posed to bring things to a head through po­lit­i­cal re­volt.

127:2.2A group of or­ga­niz­ers from Je­ru­sa­lem ar­rived in Gal­i­lee and were mak­ing good head­way un­til they reached Naz­a­reth. When they came to see Je­sus, he lis­tened care­fully to them and asked many ques­tions but re­fused to join the party. He de­clined fully to dis­close his rea­sons for not en­list­ing, and his re­fusal had the ef­fect of keep­ing out many of his youth­ful fel­lows in Naz­a­reth.

127:2.3Mary did her best to in­duce him to en­list, but she could not budge him. She went so far as to in­ti­mate that his re­fusal to es­pouse the na­tion­al­ist cause at her be­hest was in­sub­or­di­na­tion, a vi­o­la­tion of his pledge made upon their re­turn from Je­ru­sa­lem that he would be sub­ject to his par­ents; but in an­swer to this in­sin­u­a­tion he only laid a kindly hand on her shoul­der and, look­ing into her face, said: “My mother, how could you?” And Mary with­drew her state­ment.

127:2.4One of Je­sus’ un­cles (Mary’s brother Si­mon) had al­ready joined this group, sub­se­quently be­com­ing an of­fi­cer in the Galilean di­vi­sion. And for sev­eral years there was some­thing of an es­trange­ment be­tween Je­sus and his un­cle.

127:2.5But trou­ble be­gan to brew in Naz­a­reth. Je­sus’ at­ti­tude in these mat­ters had re­sulted in cre­at­ing a di­vi­sion among the Jew­ish youths of the city. About half had joined the na­tion­al­ist or­ga­ni­za­tion, and the other half be­gan the for­ma­tion of an op­pos­ing group of more mod­er­ate pa­tri­ots, ex­pect­ing Je­sus to as­sume the lead­er­ship. They were amazed when he re­fused the honor of­fered him, plead­ing as an ex­cuse his heavy fam­ily re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, which they all al­lowed. But the sit­u­a­tion was still fur­ther com­pli­cated when, pres­ently, a wealthy Jew, Isaac, a mon­eylen­der to the gen­tiles, came for­ward agree­ing to sup­port Je­sus’ fam­ily if he would lay down his tools and as­sume lead­er­ship of these Naz­a­reth pa­tri­ots.

127:2.6Je­sus, then scarcely sev­en­teen years of age, was con­fronted with one of the most del­i­cate and dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions of his early life. Pa­tri­otic is­sues, es­pe­cially when com­pli­cated by tax-gath­er­ing for­eign op­pres­sors, are al­ways dif­fi­cult for spir­i­tual lead­ers to re­late them­selves to, and it was dou­bly so in this case since the Jew­ish re­li­gion was in­volved in all this ag­i­ta­tion against Rome.

127:2.7Je­sus’ po­si­tion was made more dif­fi­cult be­cause his mother and un­cle, and even his younger brother James, all urged him to join the na­tion­al­ist cause. All the bet­ter Jews of Naz­a­reth had en­listed, and those young men who had not joined the move­ment would all en­list the mo­ment Je­sus changed his mind. He had but one wise coun­selor in all Naz­a­reth, his old teacher, the chazan, who coun­seled him about his re­ply to the cit­i­zens’ com­mit­tee of Naz­a­reth when they came to ask for his an­swer to the pub­lic ap­peal which had been made. In all Je­sus’ young life this was the very first time he had con­sciously re­sorted to pub­lic strat­egy. Thereto­fore, al­ways had he de­pended upon a frank state­ment of truth to clar­ify the sit­u­a­tion, but now he could not de­clare the full truth. He could not in­ti­mate that he was more than a man; he could not dis­close his idea of the mis­sion which awaited his at­tain­ment of a riper man­hood. De­spite these lim­i­ta­tions his re­li­gious fealty and na­tional loy­alty were di­rectly chal­lenged. His fam­ily was in a tur­moil, his youth­ful friends in di­vi­sion, and the en­tire Jew­ish con­tin­gent of the town in a hub­bub. And to think that he was to blame for it all! And how in­no­cent he had been of all in­ten­tion to make trou­ble of any kind, much less a dis­tur­bance of this sort.

127:2.8Some­thing had to be done. He must state his po­si­tion, and this he did bravely and diplo­mat­i­cally to the sat­is­fac­tion of many, but not all. He ad­hered to the terms of his orig­i­nal plea, main­tain­ing that his first duty was to his fam­ily, that a wid­owed mother and eight broth­ers and sis­ters needed some­thing more than mere money could buy—the phys­i­cal ne­ces­si­ties of life—that they were en­ti­tled to a fa­ther’s watch­care and guid­ance, and that he could not in clear con­science re­lease him­self from the obli­ga­tion which a cruel ac­ci­dent had thrust upon him. He paid com­pli­ment to his mother and el­dest brother for be­ing will­ing to re­lease him but re­it­er­ated that loy­alty to a dead fa­ther for­bade his leav­ing the fam­ily no mat­ter how much money was forth­com­ing for their ma­te­rial sup­port, mak­ing his never-to-be-for­got­ten state­ment that “money can­not love.” In the course of this ad­dress Je­sus made sev­eral veiled ref­er­ences to his “life mis­sion” but ex­plained that, re­gard­less of whether or not it might be in­con­sis­tent with the mil­i­tary idea, it, along with ev­ery­thing else in his life, had been given up in or­der that he might be able to dis­charge faith­fully his obli­ga­tion to his fam­ily. Ev­ery­one in Naz­a­reth well knew he was a good fa­ther to his fam­ily, and this was a mat­ter so near the heart of ev­ery no­ble Jew that Je­sus’ plea found an ap­pre­cia­tive re­sponse in the hearts of many of his hear­ers; and some of those who were not thus minded were dis­armed by a speech made by James, which, while not on the pro­gram, was de­liv­ered at this time. That very day the chazan had re­hearsed James in his speech, but that was their se­cret.

127:2.9James stated that he was sure Je­sus would help to lib­er­ate his peo­ple if he (James) were only old enough to as­sume re­spon­si­bil­ity for the fam­ily, and that, if they would only con­sent to al­low Je­sus to re­main “with us, to be our fa­ther and teacher, then you will have not just one leader from Joseph’s fam­ily, but pres­ently you will have five loyal na­tion­al­ists, for are there not five of us boys to grow up and come forth from our brother-fa­ther’s guid­ance to serve our na­tion?” And thus did the lad bring to a fairly happy end­ing a very tense and threat­en­ing sit­u­a­tion.

127:2.10The cri­sis for the time be­ing was over, but never was this in­ci­dent for­got­ten in Naz­a­reth. The ag­i­ta­tion per­sisted; not again was Je­sus in uni­ver­sal fa­vor; the di­vi­sion of sen­ti­ment was never fully over­come. And this, aug­mented by other and sub­se­quent oc­cur­rences, was one of the chief rea­sons why he moved to Ca­per­naum in later years. Hence­forth Naz­a­reth main­tained a di­vi­sion of sen­ti­ment re­gard­ing the Son of Man.

127:2.11James grad­u­ated at school this year and be­gan full-time work at home in the car­pen­ter shop. He had be­come a clever worker with tools and now took over the mak­ing of yokes and plows while Je­sus be­gan to do more house fin­ish­ing and ex­pert cab­i­net work.

127:2.12This year Je­sus made great prog­ress in the or­ga­ni­za­tion of his mind. Grad­u­ally he had brought his di­vine and hu­man na­tures to­gether, and he ac­com­plished all this or­ga­ni­za­tion of in­tel­lect by the force of his own de­ci­sions and with only the aid of his in­dwelling Mon­i­tor, just such a Mon­i­tor as all nor­mal mor­tals on all postbestowal-Son worlds have within their minds. So far, noth­ing super­nat­u­ral had hap­pened in this young man’s ca­reer ex­cept the visit of a mes­sen­ger, dis­patched by his el­der brother Im­manuel, who once ap­peared to him dur­ing the night at Je­ru­sa­lem.