I want to see if I can get the tone just right for this question. Why did Jesus' parents take him to Jerusalem when he was about a month and a half old? I'm trying for the tone of "Why did the chicken cross the road?"
I want to be careful about the tone because for this question the way is strait and few there be that find it. Some diverge, for instance, to consider how very little Luke knew about Jewish customs. OK so he got some of the customs wrong. Is that really a big deal? Or that he got into a cut and paste action from the birth of Samuel, the judge, and didn't quit in time. Or maybe there was a story about John the Baptist that was modeled on Samuel and Luke ran across it and appropriated it for the story of Jesus. Those aren't big deals either, unless you are treating these stories as if they were biography, rather than the myths that have collected about the founder of our faith and which are important to us only because the founder is important. These stories, in other words, would be exactly like the stories about Zeus--if we were Zeus worshippers.
OK, why did Jesus' parents take him to Jerusalem? Let's start at another place--just one more time--and then I'll answer the question. I love this question. It's new to me and I'm just enjoying the hell out of it. The other place is Luke 24:21. Jesus is walking along with Cleopas and a friend to Emmaus. They didn't recognize him and he didn't declare himself. Cleopas and the friend are in despair because Jesus had been crucified by the Romans, but it isn't Jesus' fate they are lamenting at the moment, but the death of their hopes. They were among Jesus' disciples and they had had hopes about what "the Jesus movement" would mean. Those hopes died when Jesus died. "We had hoped," says Cleopas, "that he was the one to redeem Israel."
It had looked to Cleopas and many others as if Jesus would be "the redeemer" of Israel. Which takes us back, for the last time, to the question of what Jesus was doing in Jerusalem as an infant. The answer is that his parents were redeeming him. And why did he need to be redeemed? Because he was a first-born male (see Exodus 13:1 and 13:11ff) and they took him to the temple to "consecrate him" to God's service.
The original idea was that God earned the services of all first-born males by passing over them when he was slaying all other first-born males in Egypt. In return, these little boys would spend their lives serving God in some special way, perhaps as a priesthood. But the tribe of Levi eventually took over the priesthood (Jesus dealt with the Levites through all of his ministry, you will recall). This change was reflected in a provision that the child could be "bought back," i.e., "redeemed" for five shekels. As near as I can make it, that's about $170 U. S. dollars. (see Numbers 18:15--16 for the original provision.). That would be a lot for parents who couldn't afford a lamb (Luke 2:24) and gave, instead, the poor person's offering of two pigeons.
There would be a glorious symmetry if Jesus would have had to be redeemed so that he could be the Redeemer. I think it is that thought that first tickled my imagination. In fact, the ministry of Jesus would not have been different in the smallest degree had his parents' not consecrated and then redeemed him. It tells us a lot about the parents and it lodges Jesus firmly within the tradition of the Law, but he lived a life of complete consecration to God in any case so from a theological standpoint, it really doesn't matter.
It was fun, though, wasn't it?
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