hesitation.
So as a baby did He cry? Why not? Before a baby learns to speak he makes
his needs known by crying to get attention. But as a toddler did He whine?
It seems clear that He did not. As a boy did He misbehave or do anything
that was in any way inconsiderate of others? The teaching seems clear that
He did not. The Divine love moved Him from within to respond to every evil
inclination with NO, so that He could say, “No, I will not do that.”
Now some have supposed that the incident in Jerusalem when, as it says,
“the boy, Jesus, lingered behind” as Mary and Joseph set off for Nazareth,
suggests some misbehavior on His part. We get this impression partly from
the word, lingered, and partly from the reaction of the two parents who were
clearly distressed about it and eventually confronted Him saying, “Son, why
have you done this to us?” as if it were all His fault.
But remember, they had other children; Jesus was just the firstborn. And
the word, lingered, suggests intent, whereas the original Greek word simply
means “remained”: He had remained behind. Clearly this was a case of busy,
pre-occupied parents neglecting one of their children, assuming He was
with them but not checking. And the Lord, for His part, made the best of the
situation by going to the Temple and teaching the scholars there.
OK, some of this admittedly is speculation, but given the teachings surely
it makes more sense than the idea that the Lord was in any way inconsiderate.
Indeed the message in Luke is that, “He went down with them and came to
Nazareth, and was subject to them.” (2:51) This could not have been a change
of heart, for we know that the Lord was motivated from conception by
Divine love, and never wavered from that love at any time. But He did grow
and mature “sooner, more fully and more perfectly than (all) others” so that
He was thinking and doing things as a child that most of us cannot begin to
comprehend until old age. As He said, “Why have you sought Me? Did you not
know that I must be about My Father’s business?”
There are two critical implications here. The first is in the question,
“Why?” Of course the Lord knew why they had sought Him! Typical of all
the Lord’s questions throughout His ministry He was asking them to make
them think: were they concerned for Him or for themselves? Remember, Mary
represents a merely natural will, and Joseph a limited, finite understanding. As
for “My Father’s business,” the word, “business” is not in the original language,
it simply says, “in what is My Father’s.” The Lord from birth was “in what is
His Father’s” and never stepped outside of that – which takes us to the main
point of this sermon.
When the Lord “assumed the Human” in this world it was not just a material
body; more importantly it was a Human mind formed from the interaction
of the natural and spiritual worlds. It was a consciousness derived from the
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