Rereading the Bible

I have been somewhat stuck with the story of Jesus in the Temple as a twelve year old boy.
He is discussing the Hebrew scriptures with the teachers of the law.
His parents cannot find him and when Mary questions him he replies:
Did you not know I would be in my Father’s house?
This is not in my opinion a rebuke so much as an invitation to his Mum to go on pondering.
The ten infancy narratives of which this is the last at the beginning of Luke’s Gospel give us an insight.
Mary AND Jesus are pondering who he is why he has come and how to understand this incarnation in the light of their own scriptures.
Mary’s song after her initial encounter with Elizabeth whose husband had also been visited by an angel turns the expected norms of those scriptures upside down.
We should expect nothing less inn the person and ministry of Jesus.
And the boy Jesus invites Mary to go on ‘seeing’ this revelation/manifestation of God for what it truly is.
For in Jesus the God of the Hebrew scriptures is both bringing to fulfilment all that he had promised and starting over.
And this is no kore evident than in the story paired in these infancy narratives with this one namely that of Zechariah in the Temple.
An old, upright, priestly man is unbelieving.
A young boy is challenging the beliefs of those he converses with.
An elderly couple will have a child of promise like Abraham and Sarah, this is a new beginning similar to the last beginning but also different.
For Jesus is the single 'seed’ of Abraham, and the Son of God, like Adam.
And yet he will submit to his heavenly Father and successfully recapitulate ancient Israel’s history.
And therefore this new covenant will not be wrongfully restricted to the people of Israel but as God had always intended be extended to incorporate all peoples.
God’s promise to Abraham now being fulfilled in this new child is a universal one.
And Jesus quoting from the prophet Isaiah makes it clear to his Mum that this is so;
For his particular quotation is that God’s house is a house not for sacrifice but of prayer and not sin ply for his ancient people Israel but for all nations.

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