“Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” Luke 2:41

The story of the boy Jesus in Jerusalem is a troubling one. “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” he asks, in Seventeenth Century English.

How did his parents not even notice he was missing? Many of the people of rural communities were part of large, extended families and to have gone off for a day would have not been unusual, but parents would always have known with which member of the family they would have found their children. It is worrying to a parent who was probably overprotective  that Mary and Joseph hadn’t been paying more attention!

Not only is Jesus missing for a day before his absence is noticed, it then takes three days for them to find him. This is disturbing. How could it have taken his parents three days to find him? It is baffling to ponder Mary and Joseph spending three days wandering around Jerusalem searching for the twelve year old Jesus.

Then, when they finally, find Jesus, he doesn’t even say sorry for wandering off. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” he says.

There was no doubt about it, anyone saying that to his mother after being missing for so long would have got a slap around the head and told not to be cheeky before being unceremoniously being dragged out of the place and being subjected to a lengthy telling off about all the trouble they had caused.

The story is one that causes problems because it runs directly contrary to childhood experience of life and what children are taught about what was acceptable behaviour.

It’s hard to believe that the First Century readers who would have read Saint Luke’s Gospel would not have seen the story in a way similar to that of traditional people down through the ages. Modern parenting was still twenty centuries off; children did what they were told. Wouldn’t they have seen Jesus as precocious and unmindful of the pain he had caused his parents?

Why does Luke include an episode that is not exactly flattering in its presentation of Jesus?

It is Luke’s stated purpose at the outset of the Gospel that he will set down in order all that he has learned, he writes in Luke Chapter 1 Verse 3, “since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you”. It would not be consistent with his purpose for him to have discovered a story of Jesus at the age of twelve and not to have included it in his “orderly account.”

Perhaps there is more to it than that though.

The story of Jesus is the story of God taking on human flesh. Perhaps Luke’s purpose in including the story is to make the point that God taking on our flesh and blood was more than just fine words; that God embraces humanity to the point that he is prepared to become an unthinking adolescent.

The reaction to the child prodigy at the Temple in Jerusalem is that “Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers”.  Even “when his parents saw him, they were astonished.”

Yet astonishment does not mean that Mary did not feel considerable hurt, she said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”

Jesus demonstrates no awareness of the upheaval and the distress he has caused, “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”

Saint Luke does not attempt to excuse Jesus’ behaviour, he simply notes, “But they did not understand what he was saying to them.”

Luke realizes that this is part of the process of God’s assumption of fully human identity. Being adolescent can mean being preoccupied with oneself; it can mean not being as mindful of others as one might have been. It is not about wrongdoing or being inherently bad, it is just being human.

Perhaps this story shows that Christians believed that God really did become like one of his people.  Perhaps the twelve year old Jesus was not as mature as an adult.  Yet,  if he had been, God would not have been fully human.

Saint Luke’s postscript to the story makes the point that the boy Jesus was not as wise at twelve as he would be later, “Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men.”

The Gospel story is about a God who shared human life in every way; even in doing thoughtless things. The story of the child Jesus points to God’s presence in every part of human lives, in the daft things as well as in the wise.