Withdrawing | Mark 3:7

Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the lake, and a large crowd from Galilee followed.

Mark 3:7

…with his disciples.

Men have just begun plotting his death. A good time to withdraw!

But notice: he does not pull back alone. He takes the few with him.

Under such a threat, my instinct would be to shrink my circle to zero, or maybe one at the most. That’s what they do in the movies. Burned enough times, the hero stops sorting the trustworthy from the rest and simply holds everyone at a distance where no one can get past the walls.

Has someone ever gotten past your walls?

Years ago my creative team and I designed a logo for a fellow staff member at our large church. The staffer was talented and specific and would not be satisfied. We gave him fourteen rounds of revisions. Fourteen!

Each time, he came back, tweaked, re-tweaked, second-guessed. The goalposts sliding a little further every time. It should have been comical, and I should have stopped caring so much, but somewhere around the eleventh or twelfth revision, I stopped being a creative director and became a man defending his honor.

I blew up at him.

He went straight to our boss.

The boss called me in. I expected a referee, a ruling, someone to take a side—my side. Instead, he asked me one question.

“Are you offended?”

Darn straight I am! I said, or something to that effect, with a force that surprised me.

“Why?”

I started to answer and then stopped, because I realized he’d said something big.

My fellow staffer had violated my sense of how things ought to go, my sense of right and wrong, my sense of propriety. He had trespassed against my idea of how I deserved to be treated. He was acting as a diva, no question. But with his simple question, my boss had pried apart two things I had welded together my whole life.

The staffer’s behavior belonged to the staffer. But my offense belonged to me.

The staffer wanted his logo right. He was not coming for me. But by the fourteenth round, I had decided that his stubbornness was aimed at my honor. When you assume someone means you harm, you cannot trust them.

Offense comes from distrust. It’s being caught in the act of assuming the worst about someone else’s intentions. I was focused on the situation, but my boss revealed something I’d been carrying long before the skirmish began.

As I reflected, I realized that my sense of propriety—honor denied—was tied to my sense of performance. I was imposing an unspoken code on the other staffer. He didn’t act the way I would have or thought he should have. But maybe my response was less about him and more about my obsession with how things are supposed to be.

I have performed as far back as my memory goes. A grade at school. A role at home. A faith for my God. And I wanted my stellar performance to work. To be admired, even.

What astounds me about that exchange now is that my boss’ question got through at all.

Usually, I do not let people get close enough for the dagger to stick. Yet I answered him honestly, with more force than I meant, which is its own kind of confession.

I can measure how far my ability to trust has grown by something I have never done before. During every venture of my working life, I kept a Plan B in my pocket. An exit. A person I’d call, an action I’d take if I needed to move to the next chapter. I called it prudence but maybe it was actually distance.

My current work, Invite Ministries, is the first time I have emptied the pocket. I am all in, no backup, building it out of my own history and my own relationships, nothing held in reserve to catch me if it breaks.

Working without an escape hatch is how I have finally taken my walls down. For the first era of my life, I trusted no one all the way, not even God. To work without a Plan B is for me to admit, at last, that the foundation under me was never going to be my own reliability.

The walls never had much to do with the people it kept out. They were protecting a position I felt I had to keep earning. Once I fully trusted Jesus, I didn’t need to stay holed up in a room anymore. The walls guarded an empty space.

Now let’s consider Jesus’ action.

Jesus withdrew with his disciples…

If anyone had earned the right to pull back alone and shut the door on everyone, it was Jesus. The needs were endless, and people were coming not to give to him, but to get something from him. He pulled back—but not alone. He took the few.

In my offense, I withdrew to get away from people. But Jesus withdraws with his disciples. This detail makes all the difference. You cannot love from behind a wall; love is made of the very nearness the wall is built to prevent.

The answer is not to tear every boundary down, like a reckless attention seeker, constantly sticking his head over the top. Even Jesus stepped back from the crowd.

The answer is to stop stepping back alone.

Jesus withdrew with his disciples. He did not need them. He kept them close anyway, because he wasn’t designing his kingdom to run on his solitude or on the adoring crush of the crowd. It would run on the few. On proximity and time. On ordinary people permitted to stand near. He was living out the answer to the very thing that had me defending a logo to the death: a self so settled on its foundation that it can let people close without fear of what their nearness might cost.

Lord, I have spent too long defending a wall I built to keep from being hurt. Show me where it still stands. Loosen my grip on it. Teach me that my worth rests on you and not on whether I win the argument. Show me how to stop performing long enough to let the few come close. Thank you for the people you send to ask me the truest questions. Amen.