Luke records, “When he was twelve years old… according to the custom”. When a Jewish boy celebrates his thirteenth birthday, they officially declared an adult. The event is called a bar mitzvah. When thirteen years old, he is given the right to participate in society and religion as an adult. When thirteen, he fully assumed the responsibilities and rights of the circumcision he had received as an infant. He becomes “a son of the commandment”.
The custom was to bring a Jewish boy to Jerusalem a year before his bar mitzvah as part of his education. In Jerusalem he was to learn the proceedings of the temple and perhaps even from the best religious scholars who lived in and around Jerusalem. The teachers would gather in the large temple courts and teach.
Celebrating the time when a boy and girl becomes an adult has been lost in many modern cultures. To often children who are to immature are given rights and responsibilities of an adult. And to often young adults who are mature are not given the rights and responsibilities of an adult. The age of ascension has been blurred so that the youth are confused and society is brought low. The age at which a person becomes an adult can be between thirteen and eighteen years old. The event should not be two big and not without meaning.
I had learned of this important fact before it was to late for my son or daughter. When they graduated from high school I told them, “Today you are officially a man and daughter in society and in this family…” The conversation moved on from there.
