Although the Scottish actor Richard Wilson had done a lot of work on stage and screen – notably as the rock band manager in the drama “Tutti Frutti” – he was relatively unknown to most people until 1990. For that was when the series “One Foot in the Grave” began, starring Wilson as the irascible character Victor Meldrew. Wilson had initially turned down the part, thinking that at 53 he was too young to play the 60-year-old Meldrew; but it brought him national recognition. The series ran for over 40 episodes until Wilson decided that he “was getting a bit fed up of trying to find ways to be angry”. In the poignant final episode, Victor Meldrew is killed in a hit-and-run car accident.

The one thing that everyone remembers about Meldrew, even 30 years later, is his catchphrase: “I don’t believe it!” (or “Un-be-lieve-able!”), usually uttered as the response to some surreal yet strangely logical happening. Wilson himself began to hate the phrase as people would often say it to him if they recognised him in the street; indeed the point was made in an episode of “Father Ted” where the two priests bump into Wilson on holiday and say it: his reaction is not cordial. Yet Meldrew’s name and the phrase have both become part of British culture: the media often use them when mentioning people who constantly complain and get easily irritated by minor things.

Let’s keep Victor’s catchphrase at the back of our minds as we go to the Gospel passage we heard earlier. Last week we were in Mark 5 and saw Jesus travelling, preaching and healing in an area to the east of the River Jordan which today doesn’t lie in Israel but in Jordan and towards the Syrian border. It was a region very much under Roman authority, one where Gentiles, rather than Jews, were in the majority. These people may not have known a great deal about the Jewish god Yahweh but they did receive Jesus enthusiastically. The chapter climaxed with two very different people – Jairus’ daughter and the unnamed woman with the chronic bleed – being healed after they’d had the faith to come to Jesus. Both Jairus and the lady had taken a risk and exercised a measure of courage to do that; both had their faith rewarded.

Chapter 6 takes us to a different, and rather surprising, situation. For we’re firmly back in Jewish territory, Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth to be precise; and the reception that Jesus gets there is decidedly chilly For he goes to the local synagogue to worship and, as is his right as a Jewish man, begins to preach. It’s not clear if this is the same occasion which Luke tells us about in his Gospel – the one which ends with the worshippers dragging Jesus out of town and trying to throw him over a cliff – but, even if it isn’t, there are several similarities between the two stories. And one thing is crystal-clear: these people are not prepared to listen to the man they know as the local carpenter. Everyone in the town must by now have heard the rumours and stories of Jesus’ wonderful teaching and miraculous deeds; but the folk of Nazareth are having none of it. As a result, Jesus’ ministry there is severely hampered.

The version of the Bible we used for our reading says Jesus “was amazed” at the people’s refusal to believe. The word which Mark uses basically means “to wonder at” and it’s used in a couple of other contexts: Jesus’ amazement at the faith of the Roman centurion who believes that he can heal his sick child simply by saying the word, and the disciples who are astonished and even a bit frightened when they see Jesus’ ability to calm the storm that has blown up when they’re in the boat with him. The Authorised Version uses the word “marvelled”; ‘The Message’ paraphrase says that “Jesus couldn’t get over their stubbornness”; and we could also say that he was “taken aback” by the attitude of his townsfolk. What we have here isn’t just disappointment: Jesus is both surprised and shocked by the response he receives in the place where he thought he’d be more readily believed than anywhere else – after all, the people know him, he grew up there, he’s one of them.

And that, of course, is the problem. We might say that “familiarity has bred contempt”, but there’s more than just that going on here. For in first-century Jewish society everyone’s status was determined by their background: who their ancestors were, what town they came from, what their occupation was, and so on. It wasn’t a meritocracy, where people gained their right to be heard, but a deeply rigid society. And Jesus ticked all the wrong boxes: he was, if not working-class, at least an artisan; he probably spoke with a country-yokel accent; he hadn’t been to Rabbi school; and his father Joseph (or so it seemed) was pretty much a nobody even if he could boast royal ancestry a long way back. In other words, Jesus didn’t command respect.

And, if you think that things are different today, let me ask you this: if you see someone on television giving (say) a political opinion or explaining a scientific theory, are you influenced negatively if they dress in scruffy denims, have tattoos all over their hands or speak with a strong regional accent? I suspect we are – although we are also wary of folk who went to Eton and speak with cut-glass accents! We are quick to jump to superficial conclusions about people and then, just like these Nazarenes, treat what they say with scepticism or dismiss it out of hand.

Mark tells us that Jesus “could do no deed of power there, except for laying his hands on a few sick people and curing them”. I said last week that we must be wary of linking divine healing with faith; or, to be more precise, of telling people that, if they can summon up enough faith, then they (or the person they are praying for) will be healed. I think it’s pretty obvious, both from our own experience and by reading the Gospels, that things don’t work like that; faithful saints who seem to have oodles of faith don’t get healed while people who barely understand who Jesus is receive God’s touch – for instance the man in Mark’s Gospel who cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief!” is restored to health, while Lazarus was brought back to life even though his sister thought it was impossible.

So there’s no spiritual mathematics (X amount of faith plus Y hours of praying gives the desired result) involved here, for anything God does is up to him and we dare not try to manipulate him. Indeed, people who talk in the way I’ve described can lead their hearers into terrible guilt or despair: “If only I could have mastered that last iota of faith then my prayers would have been answered, it’s all my fault that my dear friend didn’t recover but died”. That, to, is dangerous and misguided claptrap.

Nevertheless, there is clearly a link between the Nazarenes’ lack of faith and Jesus’ inability to work miracles there. In fact one writer on this passage argues that “unbelief” is a major theme throughout this Gospel and that Mark in fact organises his entire story around it. But what we have to notice is that there are two very different sorts of unbelief or lack of faith. For the disciples, like us, recognise who Jesus is but they struggle to follow him in faith. But the people of Nazareth, in fact the entire religious “establishment” of the day, have already made the decision that, whatever Jesus does and says, they are not going to accept him. It could actually be that they’ve understood Jesus’ claims better than the disciples, yet refuse to believe them. In other words, these people have already slammed shut the doors of their minds to Jesus: nothing will convince them to think differently. When, later on in this chapter, the disciples go on their evangelistic mission, they will find others whose minds are are closed and refuse to hear them.

It seems to me that we live in strange times as far as belief is concerned. For most of us have become very cynical of so many things that we are told, especially from official sources. If a Public Enquiry about some disaster is held and the people who we thought were responsible get exonerated, we say that it’s a “fix” and a “whitewash”. If a Government Minister comes on television and tells us of some wonderful scheme that is going to reduce poverty or improve education, we say, “I’ll believe it when I see it – but I won’t be holding my breath”. Almost on our doorstep, the family and friends of a Pentwyn man who died after being restrained on June 19^th refuse to believe the Police who say that a Taser wasn’t used. We’ve gone a long way from the 1940s when wartime propaganda was sometimes taken as “gospel” – perhaps we’ve heard so many people telling us so many lies that we’ve almost stopped believing in truth itself. That’s something we’ve definitely seen with Covid: for instance, a handbill denying its existence has been stuck up in my local bus shelter. And, despite the terrible heatwave and fires in Canada, I’m sure that there are people who still deny that global warming is a frightening reality.

Yet alongside this distrust of information from supposedly reputable sources has come a willingness to believe other things which have no basis in reality. I suppose that there has always been a market for pseudo-scientific “miracle cures” – indeed, operas have been written about them! – but that seems to have intensified with the growth of the Internet. We know thar some folk still allege that the Apollo astronauts walked on a Hollywood set rather than on the moon. And trumped-up (I use the phrase advisedly) stories dominated the American media for years with people appearing to believe the most ridiculous tales: was it really likely that Hillary Clinton was sexually abusing children in satanic rituals in the basement of a pizza restaurant? Probably not; but the rumour may still have cost her the Presidency. The greatest difficulty with any of these stories is that, when one tries to argue against them, the response you’re likely to get is “so they’ve hoodwinked you too”. The folk who believe them have made up their minds and aren’t prepared to even consider the possibility that they might be mistaken.

That, I think, is the same sort of intransigent, heels-dug-well-in, refusal-to-listen unbelief that Jesus encountered in Nazareth – something which is almost impossible to overturn. And it explains, at least in part, why evangelism can be so difficult today (not that it’s ever been easy): people have already decided that they are not going to come to faith. It’s quite likely that they know nothing about the Christian story except a little bit of inaccurate hearsay they’ve heard at third-hand; possibly, and for very little reason, they’ve decided that God does not exist; or perhaps, sadly, they’ve closed their minds to the Gospel message because they are all too aware of the abuses and scandals in churches which have recently come to light – these have caused immense damage. All this means that, when Christians try to present the Gospel message, they won’t even be allowed to begin. For these folk aren’t honest doubters, searching for truth: they’ve rejected God without even giving him a fair hearing.

How do we communicate with such people and get beneath their skin? It’s clearly very difficult: after all Jesus, with his reputation going before him, didn’t manage to do it! I won’t say that God “hardened their hearts” (to use a Biblical phrase) as it seems that they have done that all by themselves. We can only pray that something will happen – a miracle or a dramatic life event – that shocks them out of their smug arrogance and makes them start to question the things they once thought were beyond doubt. That will be extremely unsettling for them, but ultimately positive: for we believe that the Gospel of Jesus brings life. Let us pray – both for unbelievers and even for ourselves – that the barriers of unbelief will be broken down and the closed minds be opened, so that the reviving light of Jesus may stream in.