Already Misunderstood

Luke 2:50 And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them.



50 καὶ αὐτοὶ οὐ συνῆκαν τὸ ῥῆμα ὃ ἐλάλησεν αὐτοῖς.

This is the end of one of the more perplexing stories in the gospels.  If I had been Joseph I can guarantee that Jesus would have received a spanking for what he did.  At the very least, I can tell you that when we got to "what do you want to tell God you're sorry for today?" I would have prompted him to mention staying behind from the rest of the caravan to hang out in the temple.  This is perplexing because we know that Jesus never sinned; therefore, this was not as sinful as it seems.

Like Joseph, I would not have really understood what He was doing and why.  Here we see that they did not συνῆκαν, which is an aorist active third-person plural.  There is nothing really special about the aorist mood here, in my opinion.  We just see that Mary and Joseph were confused.

Of course, we see this later on in Jesus' ministry.  We don't see any mention of Joseph, but we do see that Mary and His brothers tried to get Him to stop with all His crazy preaching.  They just didn't get it.  They knew that He was somehow special, but they didn't really fully grasp it.

I'm not sure how to apply this other than to exhort all of us to study Jesus.  Read the gospels.  Read what Paul had to say about Him.  Look at His life.  Read the stories in the context of what He came to do.  His job was to inaugurate the Kingdom.  He turned the Jewish world upside-down.  He turns out world upside-down too.  Jesus changes everything.

Personally, I am convicted by the fact that there are some parts of my life that don't seem to be too greatly affected by knowing Him.  At least they are not radically different from the way people who don't know Him live.  That is not to say I must become an Anabaptist, but I also want to give myself completely to Him.  He gave it all.  What else can I do?