FOR PARENTS of young children, it can happen in an instant. One second, they’re with you, and the next second, they’re not. The child you love so much, the child you want to protect with everything that is in you, is suddenly gone. Somehow, you didn’t notice when they let go of your hand and wandered off. And now, the frantic search begins.

When our kids were small, we enjoyed visiting science museums, which were both educational and fun (these days, the even more kid-friendly versions are known as “discovery labs”). The exhibits were bright and colorful, inviting children and adults alike to touch, play, and learn. We would hold our kids’ hands firmly as we navigated through the crowd. But with every new display, we had to let go temporarily so they could use their hands to explore.

It’s easy for both parents and children to get distracted in such a place. The kid’s attention is captured by another exhibit, and drawn like a moth to flame. The parents, who have longer attention spans, aren’t ready to move on yet and are still focused on the current exhibit. Then, as their interest wanes, they realize with a shock that their child is gone.

That’s how we lost track of our son. Panicked, my wife and I scurried about looking for him. I wanted to shout out his name. But I also didn’t want to cause a scene or draw attention to the fact that he was lost. It probably took about two minutes to find him, but it felt more like two hours.

Has something like that ever happened to you? Then try to imagine what it might feel like to realize that your son has been missing for an entire day, and taking two more days to find him.

It can happen. Even to the parents of the Messiah.

Joseph and Mary had come to Jerusalem for the Passover, as was their yearly habit. They probably brought Jesus with them every time, though Luke doesn’t say this directly. He does say that when Jesus was twelve, “they went up to the festival, according to the custom” (2:42, NIV). This may mean that Jesus had come of age, and was now considered a bar mitzvah, literally, a “son of commandment,” one who was now responsible as an adult for fulfilling his moral and religious obligations. Today, the traditional age for the bar mitzvah celebration is thirteen, but it’s not certain what the practice was in the time of Jesus.

Joseph, Mary, and Jesus stayed for the entire weeklong festival. Here again is how Luke describes what happened next:

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. (vss. 43-47)

Reading this, you might think Joseph and Mary to be clueless or irresponsible. How do parents not realize that their son is missing for an entire day?

But we may make that judgment from within a set of cultural assumptions in which nuclear families and private households are the norm, and the responsibilities of parents are defined accordingly. Joseph and Mary’s context was different.

Try to imagine it this way. Reading between the lines of Luke’s description, when the family left Jerusalem, they didn’t make the journey on their own; they traveled in a caravan. When the New International Version says that Joseph and Mary thought Jesus was in their “company,” the word Luke uses pictures people traveling together on the road. The family was surrounded by “relatives and friends,” probably including some of their neighbors from Nazareth.

In a communal culture like theirs, all the adults had some authority over and responsibility for all of the children. None of the parents, for example, would have told another adult, “Hey! You don’t get to tell my child what to do.” The supervision of children would have been shared, and the children would therefore have had more freedom of movement. It wasn’t until the caravan stopped and regrouped in the evening that Joseph and Mary noticed that their son was missing.

Also, as William Hendriksen has suggested, it’s possible that the traveling customs of a slightly later time were already being practiced then: if so, the women and children traveled at the front of the caravan, and the men at the back. At twelve years old, then, was Jesus a child or a man? Should he be up front or in the back? Either might be expected. With Hendriksen, I can imagine Joseph and Mary coming together at the end of the day, realizing that Jesus was gone, then looking at each other with growing horror and saying, “But I thought he was with you.”

At that point, they had already traveled a day’s journey from Jerusalem. When they couldn’t find Jesus in the caravan, they knew they had to go back, which was another day’s journey. Thankfully, on the third day—perhaps the three longest days of their life together—they found him.

Luke, you’ll recall, didn’t tell us how the shepherds found the baby Jesus, only that they did. And here again, we’re not told how Joseph and Mary found Jesus in the temple courts. Is that the last place they remembered being with him? Did they start there, or look somewhere else first?

Luke doesn’t say. But that’s not his point. He wants to show his reader how even at age twelve, Jesus was already growing in wisdom, the wisdom that would a couple of decades later astonish those who listened to his teaching. The man around whom Luke’s story will revolve can already be seen in the boy.

There may have been some well-known sages among the group surrounding Jesus, teachers who had also come to Jerusalem for the feast. The boy knows his place. He doesn’t lecture, he listens. But he’s not shy, either. He asks questions, and they answer. Then they ask questions, and he answers with far more insight and understanding than anyone listening would have expected of a twelve-year-old.

I picture a frantic Joseph and Mary stumbling on this relatively peaceful scene and being utterly dumbfounded. What would they say? How would Jesus respond? We’ll listen in on their conversation next.