Jesus and his disciples were attracting a crowd. People came, the disciples baptized, the religious leaders noticed.

They had the story wrong, of course. They thought Jesus was doing baptizing. But still, they noticed.

For some reason, when Jesus hears about the attention, he heads out of town, back toward home.

It could be that he was running scared. Somehow, that doesn’t seem likely. What is more likely is that he was protecting the disciples from premature popularity. He needs to spend the next couple years teaching them.

Sometime our spiritual promotions are slow because we have more to learn.