This text in its context hides a brilliant insight about how familiarity can check faith.

It’s buried, but I believe it’s there … a key to how "faith" works.

Faith not in the sense of creeds and ideas that we believe.

But the kind of faith that heals, and gives us confidence to live boldly.

Last week, we looked at two stories in Mark, one nested within the other.

In the internal story, a woman touches Jesus and is healed.

Jesus says to her, "Your faith made you well."

In the external story, Jarius asks Jesus to heal his daughter.

When news comes that Jesus is too late, everyone doubts.

They laugh at him.

Jesus takes a few believers in with him, to awaken this little girl.

Metaphorically, these stories, one nested in the other, contrasts two approaches to faith … one, a stubborn faith … the other, resigned doubt. Believing the worst.

This week, we hear how Jesus entered his hometown.

This story, in the context of the other two, continues the theme.

Doubt, suspicion, criticism, negativity, makes healing and wholeness impossible.

Jesus enters the synagogue, walks up to the pulpit, and begins teaching.

He speaks an unusual truth. Notably strange, different, challenging.

People begin to point and question.

§ "Who is this, who proposes to teach us?"

§ "Is not this our hometown boy?"

§ Didn’t we teach him in our Sunday School classes?

§ Were we not his playground supervisor?

Home town folks can be proud of their children who go to far off places and make good. They get their names in the newspapers.

But not for a hometown boy to come home to preach!

To assume that he has something to say to us!

The text says an interesting thing. Ponder.

It says that because people did not believe in Jesus, he could do very few deeds of power with them.

Again, another contrast with the woman who stubbornly believed.

We might say that the hero in this string of stories is not as much Jesus. The heroine is this woman who pushed through the crowds and touched the him of his garment.

       Now this is a different picture of Jesus’ healing than the one with which I grew up.

Most people grew up with a "magic wand" kind of Jesus.

He walked around and touched people, or said a few words over them, and "ZAP," the blind open their eyes and see. The lame get up and walk.

This is how faith healers are portrayed by television evangelists.

They lay their hands on people, people fall over backwards, and then they get up and throw away their crutches. They leave behind their wheel chairs.

And they pour a lot of money in the bucket, believing that it is the evangelist who has some self-sufficient, magic power to heal.

Mark seems to suggest that Jesus’ ability to heal fundamentally depends on the faith people bring to the experience.

Repeatedly, Jesus gives credit back to the people. "Your faith made you well."

Without their faith, without their picture of health, Jesus is rendered powerless.

      Doubt checks faith.

Passionate Belief is as necessary to healing and wholeness as the positive images we hold in consciousness.

Bring these two together—passionate belief and positive images—and we become the conduit for the creative power of God to pour through us.

Matthew’s gospel has Jesus saying:

"Ask, and it will be given you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, it will be opened for you."

"For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. Everyone who knocks, it will be opened for them.

Mark says in his gospel, ask anything that you want in prayer,

And if you believe that it will be so, it will be so, …

Even if you say to this mountain, move hence to yonder place.

Now I do not think that this passage is talking about telekinesis.

This, to me, is a metaphor. But a metaphor not to be dismissed.

This is metaphoric instruction on the natural process of miracle making.

Go to the gas station and fill up your car.

Your car is the form, the mechanical mold formed by our images.

The gasoline we put into our spiritual vehicles is what makes them go.

      Like the citizens of Nazareth, what can nullify our capacity of faith is too much familiarity.

For when we become too familiar with life, we think we know how it works.

And when it doesn’t work, we become contemptuous.

When taken for granted, we become irritable, and kindness does not flow as easily from us.

    This last week, Connie and I had company from out of town … a mother and her daughter.

They are from Missouri, and outside of a brief visit, have never been to California.

The ocean, the weather, the ambiance—all brand new for them.

Connie and I decided to take them to some of our old familiar places.

Usually, when we have guests, we like to take them to new places, but these two wanted to see some of the more familiar San Francisco sites.

We took them to pier 39.

The "Bush Man" scaring people as they walked by.

A man painted silver, standing like a statue, and dancing to rap music.

All the time, hinting and tempting people to put money in his bucket.

It was all too familiar to me … and my cynicism began to set in.

We were at the pier rather late, and we saw the silver man get down off his podium, and drive off in his BMW.

A fortune teller caught my hand and stopped me.

She wanted to give me a sample reading, so she looked at the lines in my hand and told me that I was an honest man, that I’ve had a rough time in the past but now that was over, and things will go well. Then she asked me if she could do a reading.

I said no, that I was happy enough with her sample reading.

My cynicism was growing … being familiar with the place, I noticed how so many vendors seem to be taking advantage of the tourists.

Our guests had a different perception.

For them, everything was Wow! Ooh! Ahh!

They were noticing things that I have grown to ignore.

We were sitting in the Bubba Gump Restaurant, by the window.

They were looking out, pointing to and admiring every little thing that passed by.

Sail boats, cruise ships, a piece of debris floating in the water.

A seagull perched close by.

They commented on the whiteness. The little red mark. Just a common seagull?

Eight or ten pelicans flew by, all in a row, skimming just inches above the surface of the water, and one of our guests pointed and said, "Look at the seagulls!"

I started to cup my hand beside my mouth and whisper, "Those are pelicans."

But I stopped myself. What difference did it make? I didn’t want to dent all that excitement.

Especially since some naturalist could as easily sit beside me and tell me things I do not know.

Looking at these pelicans, A.K.A., seagulls, it was like the universe was trying to teach me something.

To look through the familiar. To look again, with beginners eyes. To really "see" again.

We stop living when we stop noticing, and what is familiar is forever fertile.

        What heals may not be something new coming into our lives.

What heals may be something that is already around us.

We may just need to see it again for the first time.

Like living in little bubbles, wobbling their way to the surface. Then popping and disappearing.

Sometimes people live in a tiny bubble of awareness, never fully noticing anyone or anything else.

Or like a vine growing on a trestle, weaving in and out of other vines. Like the proverbial "seamless garment." Each touching and supporting the others, and never growing tired of familiarity.

         Who is that familiar face, coming up the road, walking into our town?

To bring passionate faith together with positive imagery, look into that familiar face.

For what might be the most transforming for us, hides in what is most familiar to us.