obeying authority

The pre-teens are an interesting age. A lot changes, and personalities develop. For moms and dads, this is that hard time when they start seeing things in their kids that didn’t come from home; school and friends start exerting greater influence and pre-teeners start making more independent choices. 

What about Jesus at that age? Was he typical? Of course not; he was God. The idea of formative influences is ridiculous. Instead, this is what life with a middle-school-age Jesus was like, from Luke 2:41-52: 

“Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. 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?’ But they did not understand what he was saying to them.

“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 favor with God and man.”

For Jesus, this festival outing to Jerusalem was a little like a trip home; he sat in his father’s house and discussed family affairs with committed supporters. A precocious son, he understood the conversations and made astounding contributions that came directly from his father. 

Mary, far from remembering that Jesus was the son of God, seems to have seen him only as a 12-year-old boy. She worried and scolded. And Jesus, after explaining, obeyed.

That, to me, is a helpful detail. There’s no reason on earth Jesus had to obey his parents; as authority figures they were woefully inadequate to lead him. They were capricious and willful, sinning in all the ways that people do. Yet God had ordained the human family to have parents, and called Christian children to obey them. So Jesus, in obedience to God, obeys his mom.

Most of my authority figures are flawed; there are days I resent being accountable to them. It helps me to remember that God chooses for a time to grant them authority and to work through them. He calls me to respect their authority, because the alternative is to disrupt the orderliness of our society.

Certainly, if Jesus can cheerfully listen to a fretful mom, I can willingly work to help my human leaders to be the best they can be.