“After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but there were unaware of it.” Luke 2:43
After his parents spent three maybe five days apart from the 12 year old Jesus, and at least four of those days absolutely frantic about him, he tells his parents, “Why were you searching for me?
Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house.”
Now that is not what most of us would want to hear from a kid on the way to becoming an adult, even a young adult. But Jesus seems to have been tuned into his longings and doing something about them.
Some of us are quite tuned into our longings and grant them high value in our decision making. However, our vision of Christian maturity as a follower of Jesus, doesn’t just unleash every one of our longings as the finished and ultimate truth about us. We recognize that our own longings though they may be good are also susceptible to the kingdom of darkness.
Where there once was innocence now there is guilt.
Where there once was honour now there is shame.
Where there once was trust now there is fear.
In the Kingdom of Darkness guilt longs to be right, shame longs to be respected, and fear longs for security and strength. The answers provided by the Kingdom of Darkness bend us away from Jesus and His ways. We all grow up with some kind of vision even a warped vision of what it means to be a strong, secure, respectable, and righteous human. Warped visions will move toward control, greed, violence, and hateful contempt of Creation, people, including self, and of Jesus.
In the Kingdom of Jesus though guilt is forgiven, shame is covered, and fear is replaced with love. This is what the grace of Jesus accomplishes for us through His incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. When we are living fully in this grace the power of longings and will are gathered up in a conviction, “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house.” “I had to be.” This phrase get’s its urgency from a little greek word, “dei.” Sometimes translated “must,”so in some translations this passage reads, “Didn’t you know I must be in my Father’s house” or “I must be about my Father’s business.”
After Jesus’ baptism He would use the word “dei” to describe with urgency and necessity of the movement of his life toward the Cross. “The Son of Man must (dei) suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must (dei) be killed and on the third day be raised to life.” (Luke 9:22)
Jesus knew that His longing to be in the things of His Heavenly Father required the Cross. He was compelled to move according to the heart and will of His Heavenly Father.
But Jesus also used the word to describe His movement into another house, the house of Zaccheaus. This wealthy tax collector had profited from his relationship with government officials, probably on both sides of the Roman / Jewish conflict in order to take advantage of many people. But on this day, he wanted to see “who Jesus was,
but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him ‘Zacchaeus, come down immediately.
I must stay at your house today.’
So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.
All the people saw this and began to mutter, ‘He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.’
Wow! There it is again. Jesus links His longing to be in the affairs of His Heavenly Father with his actions. This time going to the house of Zaccheaus.
“I must (dei) stay at your house today.”
Jesus invited Himself to home of a notorious and wealthy man who may have been considered by some to be a traitor, a cheat, a thief, a short man who made their lives mightily difficult.
Jesus was not all about the religious house or Temple of God. Jesus is all about the interests of His Heavenly Father for people in any house, so that each person may be transformed as the temple of God.
The fruitfulness of actions are not always so obvious. But on this occasion the wisdom of Jesus’ actions are on display for us.
“But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, ‘Look Lord! Here and now I give half my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.’
Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.’”
A Prayer:
O Spirit of God,
I would tune my heart
to the longings of Jesus,
but my ear lacks perfect pitch.
I open my heart so
the Father’s heart
might define
my reputation.
Your grace must spark
holy moments
of redemptive fire
so what really matters
remains.