When Jesus got it wrong

The letter to the Hebrews contains this surprising text:
"Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered;" ^{NOTE 1}
That isn't easy reading for anyone who thinks of Jesus as the Perfect Man - but it's in the Bible! If Jesus had to suffer to learn obedience, presumably it means that some time (or sometimes) he got something (or some things) wrong. That's not to say that he sinned. No, he did not, as another verse from Hebrews assures us ^{NOTE 2}. But mistakes are not sin. So, do we have any examples of Jesus making a mistake? I reckon we have two examples, and, in both cases, he learned from them.

Angry
First of all, we have that strange story of the twelve-year-old Jesus staying behind in the Temple when his parents had already left for home ^{NOTE 3}. This tale is related only in Luke's Gospel, and he probably heard it directly from Mary. Without doubt, his parents were worried, and probably deeply hurt when they couldn't find Jesus. Not only that, but when Mary demanded "why have you treated us like this?", she seems to have been angry with him, much like many mothers before and since when adolescent children begin to pull away from their parents. Jesus wasn't deliberately disobedient. He was a precocious child, clearly keen to learn the scriptures and, perhaps, already starting to sense his future calling. But his failure to keep in touch with his parents was a mistake - and he learned from it. As Luke tells us at the end of this story, "he became obedient" and he "grew in wisdom" after this experience.

Audacious
The other example occurred close to his childhood home at the start of his public ministry. Soon after his baptism in the River Jordan and his time of testing in the wilderness, he returned to Nazareth and accepted an invitation to speak in the local synagogue. The meeting did not go well ^{NOTE 4}. He opened a scroll at the book of Isaiah and read out a text that was predicted the coming of the Messiah ^{NOTE 5}. Having caught the attention of his audience, he went on to proclaim that he, Jesus, was fulfilling that prophecy. It was an audacious claim, which many of his hearers would take as a claim to authority way beyond his known role of village carpenter - and, with a few exceptions, they responded angrily. Some of them tried to assassinate him there and then by throwing him off a cliff. What he had claimed was true. He was, indeed, the long-awaited Messiah - but this was the wrong audience and the wrong time, and the wrong place to announce that publicly. After that he couched his teachings in parables and cryptic sayings that only a chosen few would understand.

Homeless
Jesus suffered as a result of his premature announcement. He was obliged to leave his home village and remain homeless for the rest of his life. He was misunderstood by his family, who tried to dissuade him from the course that he knew was his destiny. Eventually, in the right place (Jerusalem) and at the right time (after training his band of followers) he came out clearly with the same claims - and that led quickly to his death. At that stage there was NO mistake. He made a conscious decision to declare who he was, then to remain silent rather than plead his innocence of the charge of inciting rebellion ^{NOTE 6}, and then go willingly to the Cross.

Mistakes
The Gospel records concentrate primarily on just three years of the life of Jesus, but the stories they tell are insufficient to fill the whole of those years. He must have done much more, though it was likely to have been more of the same. The infant Jesus must have fallen over as he learned to walk and garbled his speech as he learned to talk. As for the years between the incident of the boy Jesus in the Temple, and his appearance beside the Jordan, where John the Baptist was preaching, we know nothing. In the course of his "learning by the things that he suffered", it's likely that he made more mistakes. People who make mistakes learn - People who don't make mistakes don't make anything. That's the way of life. There is no-one who walks who hasn't fallen over. In that, as in many other ways, Jesus identified himself with us. He was of God, but he became man - not as an act, but as a thoroughly authentic human being.