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Biblical Wanderings: Mark 6:2-6
🕑 Added 2024-02-12 14:31:24 +0000 UTC“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.
Comments
Sam Bradley
Modern society perpetuates a false narrative, and it can be tough to trust your heart when the present reality screams otherwise. The truth is found within ourselves, and in taking the time to reconstruct our thinking, we can begin to reconstruct the world around us. From there, we begin to lay the foundations for a more honest understanding of how things ought to be. I believe in a beautiful future, I know the world is capable of change - because I am capable of change. My friends and family think I am crazy, but continue to perpetuate the same cycles they always have. They fear evolution, and their hearts are not open to that beautiful future. So they can’t imagine that future. It’s unfortunate, but I know that because I have faith in that future - Then it’s inevitable if I continue down that path. Regardless they’ll see. Rome was not built in a day.
Raíssa Leão
God, this made me tear-eyed. Will, I love your interpretation of scripture! To me, the Bible is a love letter to us all, it’s God ultimate documented philosophy and teachings of a way of life. The way you’re able to capture the deeper meaning behind the text, the way you’re able to meditate on Jesus’s messages - that makes me so unbelievably joyful and hopeful. To me, this is how powerful His words can be: it’s when we relish on them, and gather around and tell each other how it resonates with our lives, it’s when we feel and experience it all together. This is when scripture comes to life. Thank you, thank you so much for bringing us Jesus’ words but also yours and your love for them.
Holiday
Bible study time yessss
Nina
Thank you. I needed this kind of hopeful thinking. It’s helpful and I think I really want to remain a hopeful person for my whole life. Without it, we stop trying
andyjoinscults
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTa0nv-127E
Ana Ng
This comment looks broken to me so pls confirm if y'all can read the whole thing or not
Ana Ng
Perhaps I should've tried to pay a little more attention in church haha. So far all of these weekly chapters have been very familiar. Stubbornness is a blight that affects many (if not all) human persons. I know this as a major proprietor. This is on account of my love for story. The world is much more comfortable when I can recite my little conscious and unconscious mantras on how a situation must go, how I should think about another person, how *I* should act. So I'm 3 steps ahead of your seed planting, I don't just imagine my stories for 5 breaths, I imagine them for every breath! (<- complete sarcasm here) Speaking of, I quite enjoy the "a prophet is not without honor" quote from Jesus. Such irony that those who you'd assume to know him best cannot believe he has such power. I appreciate the return to the plant metaphors and the accuser. I think in the context of this week's teaching my accuser's cynicism becomes anxiety. When I tell myself stories its almost always out of worry. It's a way to protect myself like you said. Though this makes me wonder what the townspeople were protecting themselves from? As you said, who wouldn't want a teacher with this kind of power? But they'll never get that gift of Jesus's. They'll never see what's happening right in front of them because that story sets up a wall. If you hold a piece of candy concealed in your hand and ask me to hold my hands to receive it, I'll probably stumble. I can't trust that, and because of that I'll never know about the candy. Even if you showed it to me I'd assume you'd swapped a bug for candy to fool me. Another good ending paragraph to think on this week. Someone can still have love for you, but feel anger at the same. Both can be true. The seed I shall plant for myself this week is to try and let all these stories exist together. Even if I find them impossibly improbable, I'll still let them simmer in the same pot as those I find myself more sure of. Maybe their flavors will mix into something better. If it is just a fantasy, then anything can happen from here. These are only stories now. Thanks for another week of Toledo Bible Study! Further thoughts from this week's readings will be posted later. :)
Ai Miller
I will say that this discussion of the story--its power, its power over us and the ways it can undermine our own power over ourselves--reminds me of two points of other authors. The first is Terry Eagleton, who's a literary theorist whose books I love (Radical Sacrifice has a chapter on compassion that literally changed my life;) in How to Read Literature, he writes about the question of realism/"realistic" fiction, and he points out something that may seem obvious but to me was a huge revelation, which is that of course that narrative is never "real because nothing about our lives is narrative. Were we to actually try to tell stories exactly as we experienced them, we would be wholly unable to because our lives are not themselves narratives. The second point, about the "voice of hope," reminds me of the writing of Mariame Kaba, a prison and policing abolitionist who's been involved in decades of movement work. She often says that "hope is a discipline," rather than just a feeling or something that happens without work. Hope being something we have to work at, and which also involves imagining something different and then working to enact that difference, is the core of a lot of abolitionist thinking and organizing (another abolitionist thinker-writer-doer, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, says "freedom is a place," meaning "combine resources, ingenuity, and commitment to produce the conditions in which life is precious for all” (from an interview with Jezebel.) The discipline of telling ourselves stories of hope, and being rooted in that practice, is one we can use both interpersonally and more broadly.
Car Seat
Just buy our next album!
Luka Buchanan
ohhhhhhh this is so dbt! one of the most helpful philosophies of dbt that i carry with me every day is that multiple, seemingly opposing thoughts/feelings/beliefs can be true, and we are able to hold them with equal gratitude. somewhere in the grey there is a gentle truth. i work in retail and i struggle with judgement (the voice of the accuser??) against random people. because i *have* been treated like shit by customers, i get grumpy, defensive, and cold, and the story i find appealing is that all customers are stupid and rude and are basically out to get me. of course it’s more depressing that way, going through every interaction with the framing that the other person fundamentally has hatred for me. on one hand, yes, it’s true that sometimes people are shit, and it’s understandable that i would build defensive mental strategies against it. on the other hand, people are people are people and are usually just wrapped up in their own stuff, going through their own complex stories, and aren’t intent on hating another random person. the grey truth in there for me is a radical lack of judgement - that’s what i’m striving for. i try to acknowledge judgemental thoughts as they come, understand why they are there, and gently let them pass without gripping onto them. accept the interaction as it is rather than what i think it *could* be, or was. that’s what i extrapolate from this passage, anyway. that’s the seed i’m trying to plant!
Luka Buchanan
god im so sorry you are experienced agoraphobia, i had a really nasty bout of it in like 2015/16, it’s a pain in the ass to recover from. you got this ❤️
damian
i second that! i really enjoy listening to will's voice and i say that as a person who lives in a non-english-speaking country. people in my day-to-day life speak portuguese and so do i, so i rarely use english for communication except for the time i spend on the internet. because of that, sometimes i struggle a little with listening in english but he talks in a fluid way that is easy to understand and very nice to hear!
damian
"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." thank you so much for today's study, will. i've been struggling with this mindset for a while and it sucks. it's like a barrier i created to protect myself but turns out it's more overprotective than anything. i don't want to go through the same things i did in the past, but if i stuck to that, will i be able to open myself up to new good things that can happen? probably no. that's why i've been trying to change the way i process stuff that happens to me. it's very hard, but one day at a time and i will get there! again, thank you for making this series, it's not only giving me a new outlook on the bible but it's also helping me to deal with situations i've been struggling with; unfortunately i'm going through a hard time in my life right now and everything you are saying in this series reinforces the things i know i can do to feel better in the middle of the chaos, and hearing it from my favorite artist means a lot to me (that's why i always write these long comments, sorry! i just want to let you know that i appreciate the things you are saying!)
Enoch
You would be a really good narrator for audiobooks, your voice is so calming and easy to listen to. Also great stuff as always, makes me think
Sky
This is my new favorite podcast. Will, let me give you more money than $8 what the fuck
virtualdotshelf
love this one, it's very pertinent to my current agoraphobia recovery. I like the allegory of the rake; the permenant outcome in your mind is that it WILL hurt. When you're so entrenched in anxious thinking it feels like every action will always just hurt or exhaust you. The framing of these fears as stories, rather than truths, is a great opening for allowing myself to believe those fears can change, that the outcome wont hurt as much as last time. As someone who spent nearly their whole education in Catholic school, I'm really enjoying approaching the scripture this way, because it's not something we were ever allowed or encouraged to do. I;m rambling a bit here but fhjhdfj. this one means a lot to me right now
duke
This was awesome, and it’s definitely something I’ll try to think about when I get into that negative, cynical mindset. Fire emoji.
duke
Wake up new Bible study dropped
