Fr Paul reads from the Gospel of Mark (6: 1-6) in which Jesus, accompanied by his disciples, visits his hometown where he is amazed at the people’s lack of faith.Fr Paul says the very last sentence of today’s Gospel reading speaks of the people’s lack of faith. What is this lack of faith? We know from the Gospel they recognised Jesus and his extraordinary wisdom. They recognised the power of miracles of the miracles he performed, but this doesn’t seem to have been enough. What more was needed? Fr Paul says if we understand that faith is putting all my trust in God as my only hope, Abraham, then the model of faith, went out into the desert, leaving everything on which he relied, everything that made him what he was. He even trusted God to get him out of the unbearable fix when God told him to sacrifice his only son. The townsfolk of Nazareth then, presumably, thought they knew Jesus through and through. He’s the carpenter’s son, Mary’s boy. They were prepared to acknowledge his wisdom and his miracles, but they were not prepared to go further and see that God was at work in him, that he was the manifestation of God among them. It is all very well to admire Jesus, to think him a fine teacher and a heroic, honourable man, who gave everything for his high ideals; but unless we see God in him, the divine transcendence of all that is human, he cannot work the miracle of taking us to himself.In closing, Fr Paul notes today’s Gospel lesson: Faith is putting all my trust in God as my only hope.