Having progressed from Matthew into Mark, I again find myself wrestling with the same issues regarding faith as in the last posting. The text this time is Mark 6.5, in which we read that Jesus was not able to do many miracles in his home town.
I don't know whether it's a simple case of reading too far into the text, but the reason appears to be related to their unbelief (Mk 6.6). While certainly faith is involved in miracles (Mark five contains the stories of Jairus' daughter—who exercised no faith to be raised—and the woman with a hemorrhage, who did exercise faith to be healed), it's hard for me to ever see fragile and infantile human faith as the way to rub the cosmic genie bottle to get your three wishes.
I'm writing on borrowed time, so I had best leave on that note—but it seems worthwhile to mention that wisdom is also consider the source of the miracles (6.2). The people assume that authority and wisdom and miracles are commingled, which might be a worthwhile avenue to explore.
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