Audio only:
Joe shows how the Finding of Jesus In The Temple prefigures the Resurrection, and what this means for the faithful.
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer. Happy New Year. I want to talk about the finding in the template. It’s a strange event in the Bible that many of us just heard about this past Sunday. Specifically, I want to ask, how and why did Joseph and Mary lose Jesus in the temple in the first place? I’ve actually seen people argue that this event proves that Mary must have had other kids. As one Twitter user put it, if Mary only had one child, she would not have lost track of Jesus. That’s the obvious observation of anyone who’s had the responsibility for their own children that belong in a group. This guy calls it the Home Alone hypothesis because of that scene in Home Alone where Kevin’s sister’s doing a headcount and doesn’t realize she’s counted one of the neighbor kids instead of her missing brother.
One, two, three, four, 11, 92, 12. Buzz, don’t be a moron. Six, seven, eight, nine, 10. And look, it’s a clever theory and it actually does get one detail half right, which we’re going to get to in a minute. But the overall theory is actually contradicted, I would say, both by the layout of the temple and by the wording of Luke chapter two. So a little background here. Deuteronomy 16 requires that three times a year, including on Passover, all your males would appear before God in one place. In the first century, that one place was the temple in Jerusalem. Now, this commandment was understood to apply only to men, although it’s clear from historical evidence, including Luke to itself, that women and children would also join on these pilgrimages. And so as a Navarre biblical commentary points out, on pilgrimages to Jerusalem, the Jews used to go in two groups, one of men, the other of women.
Children could go up with either group. This explains how they could go a day’s journey before they discovered the child was missing when the families regrouped to camp. Now, one of the reasons for men and women making the final part of the pilgrimage separately, it involves the physical layout of the temple itself. As the first century Jewish writer Josephus explains, the temple is made up of four courtyards. Anyone, including the Gentiles, could enter the first. Jewish women could go into the first two. Jewish men could go into the first three and only the priest could go into the final, the fourth courtyard.
CLIP:
Further back, a larger area was designed for public assembly known as the woman’s courtyard. It included an extensive wooden balcony for women. The nation would gather three times each year to celebrate the festivals of Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot.
Joe:
Now remember, St. Luke tells us that Jesus is 12 when the finding in the temple occurs. So he’s on the cusp of manhood and Jewish culture. So it’s really not that surprising that Mary might believe him to be with the men’s group and Joseph might expect him to be with the women and children who are remaining outside. And remember, these are not the days of helicopter parenting and Jesus is 12, not three. I think for many people considering this story, it’s important to understand the oddity of our own culture, how strange our culture is today compared to all of human history. Now you can see what I mean, graphically illustrated in Tim Gill’s book, Urban Playground. He looks at four generations of the same family, all living in the same city. And he asks a question, how far they were allowed to travel alone at the age of eight, and the differences are striking.
In 1919, eight-year-old George Thomas was allowed to walk six miles by himself to go fishing. His great-grandson, Edward Thomas, on the other hand, is driven the few minutes to school, is taken by car to a safe place to ride his bike and can roam no more than 300 yards from home. Now, there are several factors that lead to this massive cultural shift. Gil points out the creation of cars actually make it much more dangerous for kids to walk anywhere alone, for instance. But the point here is that for many people reading Luke too today, we have to break free of this anachronistic idea that is Mary’s job to keep track of her 12-year-old son. Now, speaking of anachronisms, there’s another major change to family life from this past century, which makes it harder for us to accurately picture what’s happening here in Luke two. As David Brooks pointed out in an article in the Atlantic, the past century has seen a move from big, interconnected and extended families to smaller detached nuclear families consisting just of a married couple and their children.
So if your vision of the family traveling to Jerusalem for the Passover is one of just Joseph, Mary, and Jesus, that’s too small, but not for the reason many people think. The people picturing a scene like the chaotic one from home alone are actually right in this sense, not because Joseph and Mary have other children, but because the Bible depicts them as traveling with a whole extended family, pay attention to the details. On the evening of the first day, when Joseph and Mary presumably meet up and realize Jesus isn’t with either of them, we’re told that they then sought him among their kins folk and acquaintances. Now, how have they made it that far in the first place without realizing that he was gone because they were supposing him to be in the company? What does that mean? Well, it means they’re traveling in a large group, in which it would be perfectly normal for a 12-year-old to be with his cousins rather than with his mom.
If you have a big extended family and have Thanksgiving, picture something like that. And I personally find it interesting that this group consists of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, some assorted kinfolk and acquaintances, but there’s no mention anywhere of Jesus having any brothers or sisters in that group. Now, this still doesn’t answer the core question though. Why did Jesus get lost? But the answer is he didn’t. He was never lost. And we know this because Mary gets to ask Jesus this question directly, ask why has he treated them this way? And Jesus gives a fascinating answer.
CLIP:
Son, why has that done so to us? We hope my father and I have sought the sorrowing. How is it you sought me? Did you not know that I must be about my father’s business?
Joe:
Now in Greek, he actually says something like, “How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be about my father’s?” And the Greek just stops there. And you were left asking about his father’s what? You can take it to mean either his father’s house, temple, or that he has to be about his father’s work. He has to be doing the will of God. Both make sense, and I would suggest both are correct. That is the reason Jesus is in the temple isn’t because of human error, but because of a divine plan. And to understand the gravity of this point, we need to realize in important detail. There are nearly 30 years between Jesus’ infancy and the beginning of his public ministry. And throughout that huge span of time, time in which God himself is roaming the earth, we know basically nothing.
More specifically, this is the one and only event from that period of early years that the inspired authors made sure that we know about. And so we should be asking, what is it about this event that is so important? I would like to suggest a theory. Remember that the finding in the temple occurs when Jesus and his family go up to Jerusalem for the Passover. And remember, they find him after three days. Now that’s a phrase used four other times in the gospels. And in each of those four times, it’s Jesus announcing how he will die and rise again after three days. There are several prophecies he makes using similar language. In Luke 18, Jesus tells the 12 how they are going up to Jerusalem where he will be delivered to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. They will scourge him and kill him, and on the third day he will rise.
And Jesus is even clear that this betrayal is going to happen at the Passover. He says in Matthew 26, “You know that after two days, the Passover is coming and the son of man will be delivered up to be crucified.” So it doesn’t seem like a stretch to believe that when Mary heard her son saying things like this, she would connect the dots to this pivotal moment in his childhood. After all, when Luke describes the birth of Jesus, he tells us that Mary kept all these things pondering them in her heart. And again, after the finding in the temple here, he says that Mary kept all these things in her heart. In other words, Luke is telling us both where he’s getting these stories from. He’s getting these accounts from Mary, and second, that she’s been pondering them and the meaning of them since then.
Flash forward now to Holy Week. St. Luke describes a group of women who’d come with Jesus from Galilee into Jerusalem and who followed him mourning as he carried the cross and who witnessed his death and burial. It’s no surprise we should find a large group of women like this. Remember, it’s Passover, and Mary is right there with them. Once again, she finds herself seemingly helpless and a throng of Passover pilgrims, but this time they’re not just unhelpful while she looks for her son, they’re shouting for his death. And when Jesus is crucified, she’s right there. In John 19, there are three Marys by the cross of Jesus, Mary, the mother of God, Mary the wife of Clopus, and Mary Magdalene. Then something strange happens. On Easter Sunday, we see Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the Seplaker. Two Mary’s. Who’s missing? Well, Jesus’ own mother, of course.
She’d been with the women on Good Friday, but appears not to have gone to the two month Easter morning. And that is quite strange at first, but perhaps it’s not so strange. After all, why did the women go there? Mark says that the two Marys go to his tomb with Salome and they bought spices so they might go and anoint him. Now, if my reading of this is correct, Mary is not at the two on Easter morning because she knows it’s going to be empty. After all, her son had promised her that on the third day he will rise and Mary is the kind of disciple who would ponder those kind of words in her heart. And what’s more, she’s already been through this in miniature with the finding of Jesus in the temple. She’s felt the pain of losing him, and then she’s been reunited with him on the third day only to realize that he’s been about his father’s work the whole time.
So that’s the theory I would argue for. Jesus is purposely letting his mother experience the terror of losing her son in a city she doesn’t know, not an act of cruelty or indifference, but is a kind of preparation for the pain of losing him on Calvary so that she would know viscerally that even in the midst of this pain, everything is going to be okay. Remember Simeon’s prophecy after Jesus’ birth, he tells Mary that Jesus is to be a sign that is spoken against, and then he says that a sword would pierce through Mary’s own soul. I don’t think you and I can quite imagine the horrors that Mary experienced on Good Friday as you watched her son tortured to death. And one of the strange ways that God is strengthening her seems to be by giving her a foretaste, both of how scary it is to lose her son and how incredible it is to be reunited with him and to be reminded that he was in his father’s hands the whole time.
So I’d say it wasn’t for Jesus’s sake that the Father wanted him to stay behind in the temple for three days. Rather, it seems to have been for Mary’s sake and ultimately for our own, as long as we too are attentive and willing to ponder all these things in our hearts. For Shameless Popery, I’m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.