Mark 14:32-34
Do
you remember the movie Meet the Fockers
and the ‘circle of trust?’ If you were in the circle, you could be trusted with
the family secrets. If you were outside the circle, and you didn’t want to get
outside the circle, you couldn’t be trusted. And once you were outside, you
couldn’t come back into the circle. While humorously portrayed, the movie
taught an important lesson. We all have different levels of trust with
different groups of people. And this is a good thing.
We
teach our children to not take candy from a stranger, right? We teach them to
not allow anyone to touch them without their permission. We teach them the
difference between immediate family where hugs and kisses are allowed, and
others where hugs and kisses are not allowed. Children learn their names and
addresses so that they can get back with family if separated. We don’t just
teach them the zip code. They need to get closer than just their neighborhood.
They need to get home.
We
share our financial information with our accountant, but not with the Russian
hackers on the internet. (Or at least we don’t try to!) We share our health
information with our doctor, but hopefully you don’t trust healthcare.gov to
keep the information safe. You don’t post it on Facebook. Some things are
private, personal, to be held closely.
Even
Jesus had different degrees of closeness with those of His day. He had large
crowds who would show up occasionally. He had a group of followers, around a
hundred or so showing up shortly after His death, both men and women. He had
the twelve disciples. He had the inner three.
But
when it really was tough, only One stood with Him: the Father. He tells his
disciples to stay while He prays. He tells His Three to stay and keep watch. He
tells the Three that He is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. He
doesn’t share this information with the other eight, or with the larger groups
that didn’t even end up in Gethsemane with Him.
We need to which group of people in our lives
to share what information with. We all know people who unload their whole
history in the first few minutes of meeting. They seem to vomit their stuff all
over anyone who is there to listen. It is almost as if they can’t help
themselves. They just have to tell someone in hopes that this time someone will
really hear them.
We
have the responsibility to control our sharing. We also might need to help someone
else control the flow of information so that they will not be hurt in the
future. Scam artists prey on people who don’t have good boundaries, people who
share too much with someone that they barely know. And of course scam artists
know how to make people feel relaxed and at ease with their ‘new friend.’ They
know how to get people to drop their defenses and give up the good stuff.