Mark Whittall

There is strong language in today’s gospel. To me it sounds like Jesus is angry. Throwing people into the sea with millstones around their necks. Cutting off limbs. It’s shocking language, it’s meant to shock us, to get our attention. Something important is at stake here. But what is it? This gospel challenges me. The first time I read it, it seemed disjointed. John’s question about an exorcist. Stumbling blocks. Giving a cup of water. Being thrown into hell. Confusin

We’ve reached the turning point in the gospel of Mark, and there is a pattern that is repeated three times. Three times, Jesus announces to his disciples that he will suffer, be killed and will rise again. We heard it in Chapter 8 last Sunday, we hear it again in Chapter 9 today and we will hear it again when we get to Chapter 10 in October. And each time, there is a pattern: Jesus predicts his own suffering, death and resurrection. The disciples misinterpret and fail to u

Some of you may know that I serve as the Anglican chaplain at the Carleton University Spirituality Centre. This past Tuesday evening, as a chaplain, I took part in a Carleton U orientation week session on the topic of faith and spirituality. We had a great conversation with Carleton students from around the world, some of whom have just arrived in Ottawa. The moderator of the discussion was a young Muslim student, and his first question of the evening was this: Why is your

There is a trajectory in scripture that is constantly surprising and even scandalizing us, a trajectory that moves us to an ever expanding vision of mission and ministry. It is a vision that calls us to embrace the outsider, that calls us forward on the path of diversity and inclusiveness, that urges us to be bold, to be generous and to be changed. Martin Luther King Jr. once called it the moral arc of the universe. Jesus went to a foreign land, on the far side of the Jordan