The Adolescent Years

127:6.1The story of Re­becca’s love for Je­sus was whis­pered about Naz­a­reth and later on at Ca­per­naum, so that, while in the years to fol­low many women loved Je­sus even as men loved him, not again did he have to re­ject the per­sonal prof­fer of an­other good woman’s de­vo­tion. From this time on hu­man af­fec­tion for Je­sus par­took more of the na­ture of wor­ship­ful and ador­ing re­gard. Both men and women loved him de­vot­edly and for what he was, not with any tinge of self-sat­is­fac­tion or de­sire for af­fec­tion­ate pos­ses­sion. But for many years, when­ever the story of Je­sus’ hu­man per­son­al­ity was re­cited, the de­vo­tion of Re­becca was re­counted.

127:6.2Miriam, know­ing fully about the af­fair of Re­becca and know­ing how her brother had for­saken even the love of a beau­ti­ful maiden (not re­al­iz­ing the fac­tor of his fu­ture ca­reer of des­tiny), came to ide­al­ize Je­sus and to love him with a touch­ing and pro­found af­fec­tion as for a fa­ther as well as for a brother.

127:6.3Al­though they could hardly af­ford it, Je­sus had a strange long­ing to go up to Je­ru­sa­lem for the Pass­over. His mother, know­ing of his re­cent ex­pe­ri­ence with Re­becca, wisely urged him to make the jour­ney. He was not markedly con­scious of it, but what he most wanted was an op­por­tu­nity to talk with Laz­a­rus and to visit with Martha and Mary. Next to his own fam­ily he loved these three most of all.

127:6.4In mak­ing this trip to Je­ru­sa­lem, he went by way of Megiddo, An­tipa­tris, and Ly­dda, in part cov­er­ing the same route tra­versed when he was brought back to Naz­a­reth on the re­turn from Egypt. He spent four days go­ing up to the Pass­over and thought much about the past events which had tran­spired in and around Megiddo, the in­ter­na­tional bat­tle­field of Pales­tine.

127:6.5Je­sus passed on through Je­ru­sa­lem, only paus­ing to look upon the tem­ple and the gath­er­ing throngs of vis­i­tors. He had a strange and in­creas­ing aver­sion to this Herod-built tem­ple with its po­lit­i­cally ap­pointed priest­hood. He wanted most of all to see Laz­a­rus, Martha, and Mary. Laz­a­rus was the same age as Je­sus and now head of the house; by the time of this visit Laz­a­rus’s mother had also been laid to rest. Martha was a lit­tle over one year older than Je­sus, while Mary was two years younger. And Je­sus was the idol­ized ideal of all three of them.

127:6.6On this visit oc­curred one of those pe­ri­odic out­breaks of re­bel­lion against tra­di­tion—the ex­pres­sion of re­sent­ment for those cer­e­mo­nial prac­tices which Je­sus deemed mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tive of his Fa­ther in heaven. Not know­ing Je­sus was com­ing, Laz­a­rus had ar­ranged to cel­e­brate the Pass­over with friends in an ad­join­ing vil­lage down the Jeri­cho road. Je­sus now pro­posed that they cel­e­brate the feast where they were, at Laz­a­rus’s house. “But,” said Laz­a­rus, “we have no paschal lamb.” And then Je­sus en­tered upon a pro­longed and con­vinc­ing dis­ser­ta­tion to the ef­fect that the Fa­ther in heaven was not truly con­cerned with such child­like and mean­ing­less rit­u­als. Af­ter solemn and fer­vent prayer they rose, and Je­sus said: “Let the child­like and dark­ened minds of my peo­ple serve their God as Moses di­rected; it is bet­ter that they do, but let us who have seen the light of life no longer ap­proach our Fa­ther by the dark­ness of death. Let us be free in the knowl­edge of the truth of our Fa­ther’s eter­nal love.”

127:6.7That evening about twi­light these four sat down and par­took of the first Pass­over feast ever to be cel­e­brated by de­vout Jews with­out the paschal lamb. The un­leav­ened bread and the wine had been made ready for this Pass­over, and these em­blems, which Je­sus termed “the bread of life” and “the wa­ter of life,” he served to his com­pan­ions, and they ate in solemn con­for­mity with the teach­ings just im­parted. It was his cus­tom to en­gage in this sacra­men­tal rit­ual when­ever he paid sub­se­quent vis­its to Beth­any. When he re­turned home, he told all this to his mother. She was shocked at first but came grad­u­ally to see his view­point; nev­er­the­less, she was greatly re­lieved when Je­sus as­sured her that he did not in­tend to in­tro­duce this new idea of the Pass­over in their fam­ily. At home with the chil­dren he con­tin­ued, year by year, to eat the Pass­over “ac­cord­ing to the law of Moses.”

127:6.8It was dur­ing this year that Mary had a long talk with Je­sus about mar­riage. She frankly asked him if he would get mar­ried if he were free from his fam­ily re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. Je­sus ex­plained to her that, since im­me­di­ate duty for­bade his mar­riage, he had given the sub­ject lit­tle thought. He ex­pressed him­self as doubt­ing that he would ever en­ter the mar­riage state; he said that all such things must await “my hour,” the time when “my Fa­ther’s work must be­gin.” Hav­ing set­tled al­ready in his mind that he was not to be­come the fa­ther of chil­dren in the flesh, he gave very lit­tle thought to the sub­ject of hu­man mar­riage.

127:6.9This year he be­gan anew the task of fur­ther weav­ing his mor­tal and di­vine na­tures into a sim­ple and ef­fec­tive hu­man in­di­vid­u­al­ity. And he con­tin­ued to grow in moral sta­tus and spir­i­tual un­der­stand­ing.

127:6.10Al­though all their Naz­a­reth prop­erty (ex­cept their home) was gone, this year they re­ceived a lit­tle fi­nan­cial help from the sale of an eq­uity in a piece of prop­erty in Ca­per­naum. This was the last of Joseph’s en­tire es­tate. This real es­tate deal in Ca­per­naum was with a boat­builder named Zeb­e­dee.

127:6.11Joseph grad­u­ated at the syn­a­gogue school this year and pre­pared to be­gin work at the small bench in the home car­pen­ter shop. Al­though the es­tate of their fa­ther was ex­hausted, there were prospects that they would suc­cess­fully fight off pov­erty since three of them were now reg­u­larly at work.

127:6.12Je­sus is rapidly be­com­ing a man, not just a young man but an adult. He has learned well to bear re­spon­si­bil­ity. He knows how to carry on in the face of dis­ap­point­ment. He bears up bravely when his plans are thwarted and his pur­poses tem­porar­ily de­feated. He has learned how to be fair and just even in the face of in­jus­tice. He is learn­ing how to ad­just his ide­als of spir­i­tual liv­ing to the prac­ti­cal de­mands of earthly ex­is­tence. He is learn­ing how to plan for the achieve­ment of a higher and dis­tant goal of ide­al­ism while he toils earnestly for the at­tain­ment of a nearer and im­me­di­ate goal of ne­ces­sity. He is steadily ac­quir­ing the art of ad­just­ing his as­pi­ra­tions to the com­mon­place de­mands of the hu­man oc­ca­sion. He has very nearly mas­tered the tech­nique of uti­liz­ing the en­ergy of the spir­i­tual drive to turn the mech­a­nism of ma­te­rial achieve­ment. He is slowly learn­ing how to live the heav­enly life while he con­tin­ues on with the earthly ex­is­tence. More and more he de­pends upon the ul­ti­mate guid­ance of his heav­enly Fa­ther while he as­sumes the fa­therly role of guid­ing and di­rect­ing the chil­dren of his earth fam­ily. He is be­com­ing ex­pe­ri­enced in the skill­ful wrest­ing of vic­tory from the very jaws of de­feat; he is learn­ing how to trans­form the dif­fi­cul­ties of time into the tri­umphs of eter­nity.

127:6.13And so, as the years pass, this young man of Naz­a­reth con­tin­ues to ex­pe­ri­ence life as it is lived in mor­tal flesh on the worlds of time and space. He lives a full, rep­re­sen­ta­tive, and re­plete life on Uran­tia. He left this world ripe in the ex­pe­ri­ence which his crea­tures pass through dur­ing the short and stren­u­ous years of their first life, the life in the flesh. And all this hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence is an eter­nal pos­ses­sion of the Uni­verse Sov­er­eign. He is our un­der­stand­ing brother, sym­pa­thetic friend, ex­pe­ri­enced sov­er­eign, and mer­ci­ful fa­ther.

127:6.14As a child he ac­cu­mu­lated a vast body of knowl­edge; as a youth he sorted, clas­si­fied, and cor­re­lated this in­for­ma­tion; and now as a man of the realm he be­gins to or­ga­nize these men­tal pos­ses­sions prepara­tory to uti­liza­tion in his sub­se­quent teach­ing, min­istry, and ser­vice in be­half of his fel­low mor­tals on this world and on all other spheres of habi­ta­tion through­out the en­tire uni­verse of Neb­a­don.

127:6.15Born into the world a babe of the realm, he has lived his child­hood life and passed through the suc­ces­sive stages of youth and young man­hood; he now stands on the thresh­old of full man­hood, rich in the ex­pe­ri­ence of hu­man liv­ing, re­plete in the un­der­stand­ing of hu­man na­ture, and full of sym­pa­thy for the frail­ties of hu­man na­ture. He is be­com­ing ex­pert in the di­vine art of re­veal­ing his Par­a­dise Fa­ther to all ages and stages of mor­tal crea­tures.

127:6.16And now as a full-grown man—an adult of the realm—he pre­pares to con­tinue his su­preme mis­sion of re­veal­ing God to men and lead­ing men to God.