Biblical Wanderings: Mark 6:2-6

“Where’s he getting this from?” they asked.  “What is this wisdom he’s been given? And how does he perform these miracles? Isn’t this the carpenter? The son of Mary, and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us as well?” And they were boggled by him. Then Jesus told them, “A prophet is without honor only in his hometown, among his relatives, and in his own household.” And he couldn’t perform any miracles there, except to lay his hands on a few of the sick to heal. And amazed at their unbelief, he went around teaching in the villages.

So this is Jesus in Nazareth, a small village where he grew up. And what we see here are the townsfolk telling themselves a story. They’re seeing something in the present moment, and they can’t believe it, because it doesn’t mesh with the story that they’ve got built up. So they re-tell the story that they’ve got built up: Jesus - a carpenter. Son of Mary, brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon. Just a regular person in a large family. Not a healer, not a teacher. They’re seeing him do these things, but it doesn’t fit with the story they’ve been telling themselves.

Stories are safety mechanisms: we can predict the future. “Last time I stepped on this rake, it flew up and hit me in the face. So if I step on this rake, it will fly up and hit me again. I’m not going to step on it again.” When we repeat a story to ourselves, we keep ourselves safe. But we also lock ourselves out of the present moment. We’re too busy extrapolating from the past to predict the future. So we totally overlook what’s going on right now. And if you don’t know what’s going on right now, you won’t actually be able to predict anything. This is clearly depicted in this passage: we see you healing, we hear you teaching, but so what? We’re wrapped up in the past, in who you were when you left town. For a lot of us, it’s hard to go home for the holidays. You encounter all of that story about who you were; it’s hard to get through it and say, “here’s me now - that’s what’s important.”

“They were boggled by him.” In Buddhist practice, stories are understood to be a hindrance to your spiritual development. We get a hint here that Jesus expected a similar mindset from his followers. What I translated as “boggled” is a word most often translated in the gospel as “stumbled”, which is an important concept - not a literal stumble, but a spiritual stumble. It means something has gotten in the way of you advancing along your inner path. It’s like Neo in the Matrix, when Morpheus tells him to jump off the building. “Fly, Neo!” And instead he goes straight down and hits the pavement. That test is a stumbling block in Neo’s training.

Here, the story is the stumbling block. Who wouldn’t want a healer and a wise spiritual teacher in their town? But they’re caught on that story that that’s not who Jesus is - he’s just Joseph’s kid. So they miss out on everything he’s offering them. This is what he calls “unbelief”. “Belief” has become a very loaded term in Christian doctrine, but when Jesus uses it, he’s usually talking about believing in what’s right in front of your eyes. Believing what makes sense. Believing that deeper story of hope within yourself. Rejecting the voice of the accuser. “Nah, that’ll never happen.” Can you believe that it could happen?

It’s hard. The voice of cynicism has a lot of experience on its side. You have to consciously elevate the voice of hope to counter it. You can do this in very small bites, as practice. For five breaths, tell yourself a ludicrous story that you secretly want to hear. This morning, I wanted everyone in the world to love me. So for five breaths, I told myself it was true. Then I get up and find a different story in the world. Plenty of interpersonal challenges. I get worn down on that story: “turns out not everybody loves me.” It’s replaced with another story: “Nobody loves me. Everybody hates me.” Then I ride that story for a while, and then I take a break and go back to the first one for five breaths, because that one felt better.

So it goes, back and forth - story of hope, countered and complicated by the story of experience. Sometimes it feels like Neo jumping off the building. What, are you kidding? If I jump off this building, of course I’m going to fall. It’s a foregone conclusion. If I ask for love, of course I’m going to get rejected. It’s a story so ingrained within ourselves, in our childhoods, it’s woven into our bodies. It seems inescapable. So, can you believe for five breaths? It doesn’t have to be forever. Can you just imagine it for five breaths? Not just that it’s possible, but that it’s already happened? Then you can go back to the other story. But when you open yourself up just a little bit, over and over, it starts to become habit. You become receptive to new stories. You start to hear new notes in the chord. They complicate and enrichen your internal story.

Instead of sticking to one story, one truth, you open yourself up to multiple truths. As Dr. Becky says, “Two things are true.” You can be connected with love to everyone and there can still be problems at the same time. Someone can love you and have anger, or have fear. Everything is less simple and more mysterious than you thought it could be. You become invested, interested, engaged in the story. It’s not one more boring sob story anymore. You no longer know the ending to it. Anything could happen. It’s a new day.