Mark Whittall

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine, your anointing oils are fragrant, your name is perfume poured out. Well, we don’t get to read that in church very often! My first inclination was to preach on our reading from the epistle of James this morning. James has some really good stuff for us. And being about two thousand years ahead of his time, he managed to write down his ideas in 140 character sound bites that would be perfect for

A number of years ago, I walked the Camino de Santiago, the 800 kilometre ancient pilgrimage route across the top of northern Spain to the city of Santiago de Compostela. There, the remains of St. James the apostle are found. It`s a long walk. You might wonder why there are so many people who take a month or more out of their lives and are willing to walk such long distances, often in great pain because of the blisters and bruising on their feet. And if you ask these pilg

There is a word that keeps appearing in the gospel readings that we’ve had for the past few Sundays, over and over again, as a verb, a noun and an adjective. In fact, in today’s gospel reading, in just 8 verses, this word appears 9 times. It’s kind of important. Can you tell me which word I’m talking about? The word is life. And that’s what this is all about. The whole purpose of the bread of life discourse that we’ve been reading these past few Sundays, in fact the reason th

Ok, so now how are you going to respond? We’ve gotten to the place in this sixth chapter of John, what we often call the “bread of life” discourse, where the focus shifts to us and our response. Let’s recap what we heard the last two Sundays: Jesus has fed the thousands in the wilderness with a few loaves and fishes. It’s what John the gospel writer calls a sign, something that points us towards a bigger reality. Jesus has taken us up a level, he’s showed us that this is abou