(At the request of one blog follower I’ve posted this follow-up excerpt from WHO IS THIS GUY? and What Have You Done with My Sweet Savior?)

When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” —Luke 2:48‑49

Missing Brother John

The warm summer wind rushes through my hair acting like a blow dryer to my salty wet mop as half my head is out the car window. We turn the corner onto the road home. I can’t wait to get out of my sandy sticky bathing suit. Yuck! A sudden scream snaps my head back into the car. Immediately the mass of bodies of various sizes crammed into this late 1950s station wagon are thrown forward as my mother slams the brakes. None of us are wearing seatbelts.

After the car jerks to a stop, my mother whips her head around to face the back seats—seemingly unconcerned with the welfare of the kids who’ve just been tossed together like a salad. She’s quiet for a moment, eyes darting from child to child calculating the number in her head. Then her eyes bulge and she screams out the question to no one in particular, “Where is JOHNNY?”

We all look around at each other. Nope. There is no Johnny in the car. With no attempt to check for traffic, Mom guns the car forward and swings it around, rubber squealing and burning behind her. The g-force pancakes me and my siblings to one side of the car. The U-turn complete, we all press back into our seats as Mom peals out in the other direction—back to the beach.

What usually takes twenty minutes takes less than ten to get back to the beach. All along the way there is an excited chant from the back seats—a chorus lowly repeating, “Go Speed Racer, go! Go, Speed Racer, go!” We’d never seen Mom push the old station wagon to its max.

Pulling into the beach parking lot, we slow to a crawl as Mom frantically looks for the missing child. Mom has every concern possible running through her head—drowning, eaten by sharks, kidnapping, or worst of all, an acquaintance discovering him and learning what a terrible mother she is. The brothers and sister know better, this is what Johnny does. I have no doubt he’ll be standing there waiting for us to return.

And there he is, calmly standing at the edge of the beach parking lot with a crooked smile on his face. Mom brakes to a complete stop and dramatically jumps out, running over to hug her lost child. She pulls him toward the car and through a forced smile, in hushed tones, she begins to reprimand him. Mom opens the back door, and before we can make room for John, she slaps him on the bottom to catapult him into the car and slams the door shut.

With a smile and a wave to the few disinterested onlookers, she climbs into the driver’s seat and home we go. All the way home, Mom is reading John the riot act for being so irresponsible. Why did he wander off? Didn’t he know how dangerous it was to be at the beach alone? How did he think he would get home? Maybe she should have just left him there, then what would he think? That would teach him a lesson.

As we pull into our long driveway, she concludes with the ultimate threat: “Wait until your father gets home!”

In the silence at the end of Mom’s rant, John finally speaks up in his own defense. “I was playing in the sand and nobody told me we were leaving. Then you were all gone. Why did you leave me there?”

* * *

In the first episode, we find Jesus at age twelve. We start with the fact that we know very little about the childhood of Jesus. After his birth in Bethlehem and the family’s flight to Egypt, we know that around the age of two or three the family returned to Nazareth in the region of Galilee.

During that roughly ten-year period between the return to Nazareth to this episode at age twelve, the Bible is silent except for one bit of information. I’ll get back to this one thing later.

In Luke 2:41-52 when Jesus and his family are in Jerusalem for the Passover. It appears that Jesus decided to stay in Jerusalem while his parents returned home. After a day of travel, Mary and Joseph realized Jesus was not with them. They took two days to make their way back to Jerusalem to search for Jesus. On the third day they finally found him in the Temple courts, engaging with the teachers where he seems uncaring about his parents’ feelings of fear and anxiety.

To me there are two concerns that arise from Jesus’s behavior in this story. (1) He disobediently stayed behind and (2) he is very dismissive of his parents’ feelings.

First of all, let’s focus on the word that most translations use—lingered or tarried. This word seems to indicate that Jesus consciously and wantonly stayed behind in Jerusalem. Is this a case of willful insolence or disobedience on Jesus’s part—hiding and not telling his parents?

The Greek word used for “remained behind” is hupomeno. It is also translated on occasion as patience and perseverance. However, if you break the word down to its original two components it is hupo, meaning under and meno, meaning remain or abide or kept in a way of being restrained. The word meno was often used by Jesus when he would command or instruct his disciples to stay in place as in Matthew 26:38 (nasb): “Then He said to them, ‘My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain (meno) here and keep watch with Me.’”

The Greek word for patience as a part of the Fruit of the Spirit is a slightly different word, hupomone, indicating God’s spirit working within us for us to exercise patience. Hupomeno seems more of an outward restraint.

The word hupomeno is something like how God works all around us in ways we don’t always see. It is a type of being under his restraint—keeping us out of danger or trouble or even arranging chance encounters.

I have a bad habit of driving over the speed limit. People who are driving in front of me who go at or under the speed limit frustrate me. They are in the way of me getting where I want to go and fast. I have learned, on occasion, to recognize that these people are being used by God to hupomeno (keep me under restraint) for my own good.

More than a few times, I’ve thanked God that there was someone slow in front of me as I have passed through a speed trap—or, the occasion where I have come on an accident that recently occurred and if I had not been delayed for some reason I could very likely have been a part of the mangled wreckage.

The one thing we know about Jesus over the previous, otherwise, silent ten years, we know from Luke 2:41: “His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover.” This was a routine the family had down pat. Each year they would gather with family and friends into a caravan, travel to Jerusalem for the Passover Feast, and at a given time they would pack up and head home.

Jesus, being the perfect child, at this point required no instruction. And on this occasion Jesus, now being a “son of the Law,” was responsible before the Law for himself. After ten years, Jesus knew the routine and his parents had no doubt he was among them when they headed home. His parents fully expected Jesus to be among family and friends when they left Jerusalem.

In addition, the men usually traveled in one group and the women in another. Thus, it is easy to see how each parent could have assumed that Jesus was with the other. Joseph may have viewed Jesus as still in the role of a child traveling with the women; and Mary may have assumed that Jesus, as a “son of the Law,” had left the group of women and small children and was with the men. When they arrived at the appointed meeting place for the evening, they discovered that Jesus was not in the caravan.

So, given the circumstances we’ll give Mary and Joseph a pass on misplacing the Messiah, Son of the living God. Also, I would certainly not be surprised by the possibility that God the Father arranged to have Jesus under restraint so that it was not an act of willful defiance but circumstances that caused Jesus to show up and find that his family had already left.

At worst, Jesus may have lingered because he was actually being obedient—obedient to his heavenly Father, who either arranged for him to tarry or instructed him to do so—and Jesus obeyed.

Second, with regards to Jesus showing no concern for his parent’s upset, the Bible says that when his parents saw him, they were “astonished.” His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching (zeteo) for you” (Luke 2:48).

The Greek word for astonished is ekplesso—to strike out, expel by a blow, drive out or away. To cast off by a blow. Struck with amazement.

How is that translated as astonished? If you have ever watched the TV show, Seinfeld, you may have seen this displayed by the character, Elaine. Regularly, when confronted with some surprising information, Elaine will react with shock by shoving the one delivering the information across the room. This is the level of astonishment that Mary and Joseph were experiencing—a surprise so amazing that they pushed each other away in shock and disbelief.

Also, in this verse we find the Greek word for searching or seeking, zeteo. It means a very active seeking until you find what you are looking for. Jesus uses this word in the “lost” parables like the parable of the lost coin in Luke 15:8-10. It likely means that Mary and Joseph had searched all over, and the Temple was about the last place they looked.

In this scene, Mary is acting hurt and offended as if Jesus had done something terribly wrong. It strikes me as a similar reaction to the one my mother had with my brother John. Who is the real guilty party?

But really, can you imagine how anxious and guilty Mary and Joseph felt having misplaced not just a child, but the very Son of God for three days! Take into consideration that they had to leave the country after Jesus’s birth because Herod wanted to destroy Jesus. Now, He is missing and they are likely fearing the worst.

The twelve-year-old boy responds, “Why were you searching (zeteo) for me?” (Luke 2:49). Sounds pretty fresh and disrespectful of his parents’ feelings.

But what was Jesus saying? He was not asking why they were bothering to look for him. He was asking why they searched all over and the Temple was the last place they looked.

Jesus went on to say, “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house? (Or about my Father’s business? Or about my Father’s things?)” (verse 49).

By now, you know I am dangerous with Bible translation but I look at the original Greek and this non-Greek Scholar has come up with this translation: “Did you not know this thing, that I must be (present, exist) with (en) my Father?” Which seems to me much more relational. I imagine that Jesus was not just there to be about doing business or things, he was about being with his true Father.

To me, the real importance of this story is the early development of Jesus and his coming to grips with his true identity and then starting that separation from the earthly family entanglements. It also was a powerful reinforcement to Mary and Joseph that Jesus was not theirs to hold onto. They were being reminded of what they had been made well aware of through angels’ pronouncements and prophetic words and the fact that Jesus was not conceived through their physical relations—that he had come directly from God the Father. It appears that over the last ten years they somehow may have forgotten this or lost sight of it.

It goes on to say in verse 50: “But they did not understand the statement, which He spoke to them” (nasb).

What were they confused about? Their confusion had to do with Mary identifying that “your Father and I had been anxiously looking for you.” Jesus responded that he was there in his Father’s house or doing his Father’s business. Mary and Joseph were confused, thinking, “What are you talking about? Your father’s (Joseph’s) house is in Nazareth, and he’s a carpenter!”

Or, if the translation is what I think it is, then it is an even more powerful statement, making a declaration that, yes, Joseph you have been standing in as my dad, but I must now be present with my real Father.

It is interesting to me that after this scene, Joseph never appears again in the gospels. Mary and his siblings appear, but never Joseph. Joseph’s name comes up several times when people ask, “Is that Joseph’s son?” but he never makes another appearance.

Finally, as if trying to make it perfectly clear that Jesus was not an insolent child, Luke writes in verses 51-52, “Then He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them, but His mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.”

The Greek word for “subject to” is hupotasso—to subordinate, to obey, to be under authority. We find that Jesus was super-obedient to his parents, and springing from that obedience, Jesus increased or advanced “in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.”

Interesting that the word increased in the Greek is prokopto, meaning to go forward, advance, proceed, to make progress. Yet, its core meaning is “to beat forward” as in a blacksmith hammering out the length of metals. Jesus’s obedience caused his life to be forged into something of great wisdom, stature, and favor with, not only men, but with God himself! It is also an indication to me that Jesus was growing in his consciousness of his person, his relationship to his Father, and his mission.

The relational dynamic in this story—of Jesus moving away from his ties to his earthly family to move more closely in relationship with his heavenly father—will be important in understanding Jesus’s other family relational teachings in the gospels.