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Hespeler, 19 January 2025 © Beth Anne Fisher – Amalgamation Sunday
Genesis 24:42-67

Rebekah was not out looking for a husband. She didn’t leave the house that evening with any prior awareness of what next twenty-four hours would hold. She was living her life as it had always been. She was taking care of her responsibilities, contributing to her family’s well-being, labouring on their behalf.

Then someone approached her with a request. “Please offer your jar that I may drink.”

And she responded with generosity. “I will draw water for your camels also.”

Her generosity was met with generosity in-kind - jewelry of gold, and a request for accommodations. A brief interaction became a conversation, a conversation became hospitality, which created space for a story to be told, and from that story, a decision was made. A marriage was set.

If we see this story as an image of the amalgamation that occurs today, two things stand out for me about Rebekah and her role in the story. Firstly: the life that she was already living opened the way for something she could never have predicted. She was going about business as usual, and business as usual for Rebekah included a readiness to interact with, to help, and to support strangers and travellers.

Similarly, St. Andrew’s Hespeler, from what I understand, was not looking to amalgamate this year. You were living your life as a community, walking out your commitments to community care, worshipping together, and doing what has been in front of you for some time.

And then came an invitation to conversation, the initiation of a discernment process that built upon itself in mutual dialogue, storytelling, a sharing of history, vision and values. Over these conversations, it became clear to both parties that God was at work. For Knox Preston, their clarity came largely from the way that St. Andrew’s is already living and from your openness to what is currently being called “The Preston Presence”; like Abraham’s servant asked of God to show him the right person by a marker of generosity, Knox Preston came into the conversation about amalgamation asking not only for a place they could call home, but for a partner willing to expand their scope of care to include the Preston community. St. Andrew’s has shown a generosity of spirit in this dialogue, a desire and a vision to not simply take the assets (human, financial, and otherwise) that Knox Preston offers, but also to ask how an expanded congregation might likewise expand their impact on the community around them.

So thank you, St. Andrew’s, for both the character of the life you were already living before Knox Preston entered the picture, and also for your willingness to consider the camels, to look beyond and see the needs of those nearby.

The second thing that stands out to me about Rebekah’s role in this story is her willingness for this wedding to take place right away. Her family asked for things to slow down. They weren’t ready to say goodbye, for their own lives to change as she moved far from them. This is no small shift in her life, in the lives of her family, or in the life of her husband-to-be! And Rebekah decided that she was ready enough to start now.

We all know that this amalgamation has come together quite rapidly. Perhaps there are people from both St. Andrew’s and Knox Preston who are feeling rushed, who are wishing for a little more time to say farewell or to prepare for what will be different now. That is more than understandable! No one thinks Rebekah’s family was unreasonable in asking for a little more time.

The invitation I want to offer, the question I want to leave us with is, “Could we be ready enough?” What might it look like if we, like Rebekah, choose to set our attention and focus on what is ahead of us, to gather our resources and our community and go forward into a future that we hadn’t even considered a very short while ago? How have the ways we have already been living prepared us to bring generosity, hospitality, and stories of God’s leading and goodness to build a new relationship, a formidable partnership, a family of faith?

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Hespeler, 19 January 2025 © Scott McAndless – Amalgamation Sunday
Genesis 24:42-67

It was evening and Isaac went out of his mother’s tent to walk in the fields in the cool of the evening breeze. He had come from Beer-lahai-roi and settled here in the Negeb Desert some time ago. It was a harsh and dry place where little grew, but there was something about living in such a place that appealed to him these days.

He spent his time in hard labour, working relentlessly just so that his flocks and herds survived. But it kept him busy which meant that he didn’t have a lot of time to think, and that suited him just fine.

What Isaac had Lost

He didn’t want to think about what he had lost – how his mother had died leaving a huge gaping hole inside him. And he didn’t want to think about how he hadn’t even been there to bury her – how he had been so angry at his father (who he blamed for her death) that he could not bring himself to be present as his father went a buy a piece of property for a tomb and lay her to rest. He wanted to block all of that out and so he filled his days with busyness.

But when evening came and the stars came out, when sleep eluded him as it so often did, he would go out and walk in the fields and all of his thoughts and feelings came flooding back to him.

An Answer to Loneliness

The aching hole that the loss of Sarah had created in him became overwhelming. Being alone there in the field, as the magnificence of the stars slowly appeared above him, should have filled him with awe at the Creator, but it only served to remind him how crushingly lonely he was.

But then he heard a strange sound in this isolated locale. He looked up and saw a long camel train approaching. In the half-light he could make out the silhouette of a young woman climbing down from the back of one of the beasts. And suddenly he knew that, while the challenge of ongoing survival might not be over, something bigger than just him and his needs had suddenly intruded. Nothing would ever be quite the same again.

The Struggle to Survive

There are things that often conspire to bring us down in this world. Life is hard and so the struggle to just survive, to make it through one more day, can consume us. That can be true for us as individuals, but it seems especially true for us as congregations these days.

Declining membership and attendance, the givings dropping off while expenses only seem to rise, it all makes it feel as if we are always at threat. Perhaps even more challenging is the seeming loss of societal relevance and privilege within the culture. These kinds of situations have pushed many of our congregations to the place where they simply focus on keeping the doors open and the lights on.

More than Survival

I know that that is absolutely something that helped to bring Knox Preston to a place of crisis. They were in a situation where they were using all of their energy just to survive. I’m glad we’ve not gotten to that place at St. Andrew’s Hespeler, that we have been able to continue to direct lots of energy towards our mission and outreach, but it does seem that getting to that place of survivalism is awfully close for many churches these days. That is what Isaac living in the Negeb desert represents.

But I think that the image of him walking under the stars in the evening represents him dealing with his losses and challenges while yearning for something more. And that is also something that has brought us to where we are today. The good folks at Preston felt a yearning for something more than just survival. They wanted to be a part of something that had a larger sense of vision and mission.

God’s Challenge

And what about us here at St. Andrew’s Hespeler? We have been able to keep our eyes raised above the question of mere survival, but does that mean that God hasn’t been challenging us to look for something more?

I think, more than anything, God has been challenging us to look beyond the walls of our building and that immediate impact we’re able to have. God has been showing us that it is not enough to just try and make it on our own while we ignore other congregations and how they may be struggling. In short, when we have time to ponder as we walk in the desert fields in the evening, we recognize that God may be calling us to embrace a whole new model of ministry.

Not an Ultimate Solution but a Beginning

Well, today it finally happens. Rebekah dismounts from the camel, Isaac greets her with joy and takes her into the place that he has inherited from his mother, the church. And, by the way, please note that I have been very careful not to say who is Rebekah and who is Isaac in this scenario because in a sense we are all both of them.

A wedding, no matter how beautiful, isn’t going to get rid of your flaws and problems. It is not going to solve anything on its own. Any wise couple knows that they have to keep working on their personal issues, they just have the benefit of being able to work on them together. And, by putting together their strengths and weakness and discovering how they can complete each other, they also realize a much greater potential for the future than they would have had apart.

It is the same with an amalgamation. It doesn’t solve anything on its own. But just as Isaac and Rebekah came together to form one of the most formidable couples in the entire Bible, I am totally excited about the potential that is here in this union.

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Hespeler, 12 January 2025 © Scott McAndless – Baptism
Genesis 26:17-33, 1 Kings 18:41-46, Psalm 107:31-43 

If you have been around this church for a while, you know that we try to make a baptism service very special. And it has been my practice, whenever we baptize, to make sure that the entire service is all about that – especially the sermon. I’ve always been able to find some Bible passage to preach on the helps us to reflect on the person who has been baptised and on their family. 

And I am particularly blessed today, aren’t I? Not only did Lindsay and David bring us two children to baptize, but both of them (like their older brother before them) have very biblical names. This is going to be easy, right? All I have to do is find a Bible story about Isaac and another Bible story about Elijah and find some way to tie them together with baptism. Nothing could be easier, right? 

June of 2019 

Isaac was born in June of 2019. And I think we all know what that means, don’t we? It means that, when he was only about nine months old, just when he was getting old enough to come out of his immediate family and join the world, the world said no. The world said, “Isaac, we are kind of afraid of you coming out here to meet us because either you might get very sick, or you might help to spread the virus that will get other people very sick.”  

The world told Isaac that it was sure that he was very nice and a very cute baby but it would just be safer if it waited to get to know him for a couple of weeks… or a few more weeks… or a couple of months… you know, let’s make it a few years just to be very safe.  

And the good news is that Isaac was safe and healthy and grew to be a strong young boy. The less good news is that he missed out on a lot of those early socialization opportunities that previous generations just took for granted. 

Digging Wells 

In our reading this morning from the Book of Genesis, we find the patriarch Isaac struggling to find his place in the world. Isaac was the son of a famous nomad named Abraham. Nomads, wanderers that they are, are people who sometimes struggle to fit in the settled world. And so, in our reading this morning, we see Isaac traveling from place to place. Everywhere he goes he tries to establish himself. He does that by digging a well. 

Water is a rare and precious commodity in that part of the world. It doesn’t rain much and the riverbeds, called wadis, are often dry. But a well, if you can dig one, gives you an anchor – a place where you continually return to find the one thing you cannot live without. 

So, as we read this morning, Isaac started to try and dig wells. He went to this place and dug a well but the people there quarreled with him and so he went to another place and dug again. But the same scenario happened all over again. 

This pattern is repeated five times in our reading. And I think that makes Isaac a perfect poster boy for the kinds of challenges we have lived through since 2020. We’ve all been trying to find our place in this world that we don’t quite recognize anymore and things just kept happening that meant that it didn’t quite work.  

Isaac and Abilmelech 

But, of course, Isaac’s story does have a happy ending and that is what we want to focus on today. At some point Abimelech, King of Gerar, catches up with him. And that seems at first like it is not going to go well. It is a long story, but the last time Isaac and Abimelech met, it ended in a really bad argument. And so Isaac says, “Why have you come to me, seeing that you hate me and have sent me away from you?” 

But then something amazing happens. The old enemies decide to put aside their differences. Abimelech recognizes that, even if Isaac has had troubles, his God, Yahweh the God of Israel, has been with him to bless him. And so, Isaac and Abimelech decide to make oaths. They promise each other mutual care and support in the ups and downs of life. 

Beer-Sheeba 

And while they are celebrating this, Isaac’s servants come up. “Master!” they cry, “you know that well we’ve been digging for you? We finally struck water and it is pure and clean and abundant. God has blessed you.” And so Isaac joyfully names this new well, this new source that will make a home for him, Beer-Sheeba, which means the well of promise. 

David and Lindsay brought their family here to St. Andrew’s Hespeler late last year. We have been greatly blessed by their presence and their enthusiasm. They came to us because they were looking for a spiritual home, a place where they could belong after all of the disruption and wandering of pandemic years. 

Our Well of Promises 

And today they have brought Isaac here to Beer-Sheeba, the well of promises. Here have they made promises to be part of the life of this congregation and to make a place for their children in it. And we have promised too. We have promised to give them a supportive environment in which to raise their children with a good grounding in the Christian faith. All that has been sealed by the water in this well. 

I don’t think we’ve yet come to terms with how the experience of a pandemic has wounded our society. We seem to be in a place of great division and polarization that is very hard to overcome. But thanks today to Isaac, who has bought us to the waters of Beer-Sheba. Here conflict can be put aside in the shadow of binding promises made in love. And that is what baptism means. 

Elijah

The kingdom of Israel had seen no rain for a very long time. Everyone was struggling. Everyone was living on the edge. But our second Old Testament reading this morning tells the story of how, once three years of drought had passed, Elijah appeared and brought the people rain and hope. 

And there is a message in that for us today as we celebrate the baptism of Elijah. You see, after three years of pandemic had gone by, after we had all gotten used to a very different reality where we had to get by with less social interaction and an impoverished society, Elijah came into the world. He was born in October of 2022 in the third year of the pandemic. 

A Lesson from Elijah 

And so I would like to think that there is a lesson for us in the story of Elijah and how he brought the rain. Maybe it is a message that is particularly timely for where we are as a church at this moment. 

The pandemic years have been a very hard time for churches and for other institutions as well. The statistics say that, through the shutdowns and the other measures, a whole lot of people just disappeared from our congregations. It varies from church to church and denominations to denomination, but across the board churches have found their congregations to be smaller, often with a quarter or a third of the people missing. To say that the church has been living through a drought might well be a good metaphor.  

Elijah’s Dedication 

And because of that, I think we can learn a great deal from Elijah. “Elijah went up to the top of [Mount] Carmel; there he bowed himself down upon the earth and put his face between his knees.” That is, of course, an indication of his dedication. He is praying to God for an end of the drought but this is more than just sending a few words God’s way and hoping for the best. He is putting his whole body, his whole self into it. He goes into a position that, if I tried to demonstrate it to you, I might not just be able to get back up off the ground so I’m not going to try.  

This is a reminder that, if we are going to pray for the revival of the church in our times, we need to be all in. It is praying and doing. It is all of us stepping forward whenever we have something to contribute. This is not a time for half-hearted prayer or effort. 

But there is something else about how Elijah prays that is much more important for our moment. He prays with incredible patience.  

Elijah’s Patience 

“He said to his servant, ‘Go up now, look toward the sea.’ He went up and looked and said, ‘There is nothing.’ Then he said, ‘Go again seven times.’” 

This is precisely where we often fail in our Christian lives. We ask for something. We try something a little bit different. And then we ask the servant to go out and look towards the sea. When the word comes back that nothing has changed, that everything is just the way it was, what do we do then? We just quit. Oh well, I guess it’s not going to work. 

I did get that kind of reaction from a few people when we went through our journey together with Cathy Stewart a couple of years ago. We did some really good work. We listened for what God was saying to us. We introduced some really good new things. We prayed and worked for change. But, as we came to the end of that year-long process, let me tell you that there were some people who got up and looked out to sea. And when they didn’t see attendance levels suddenly restored, when they didn’t see people knocking down our doors, they were ready to give up. Some did. 

But Elijah didn’t. When the word came back that there was nothing on the horizon, Elijah went back to work. And he sent the servant again, and again, and again. Six times there was absolutely no sign that anything had changed. Elijah kept on going. And then what appears when the servant goes back a seventh time? All he sees is “a little cloud no bigger than a person’s hand… rising out of the sea.” 

Hope in the Smallest Signs 

And that might not seem like much. In fact, it isn’t much. But a wise and faithful prophet is able to read in even the smallest signs an indication that God is about to do something. And I honestly think that we have seen a few “little clouds no bigger than a person’s hand.” I think that the arrival of this family which we celebrate today is one such sign. 

They, and other young ones among us, are a clear sign of new life and new potential. The harmony with which we have been able to pull together our amalgamation is another little cloud. These are not, to be clear, complete game-changers in themselves, but they are signs of possibility and potential that we are in a great position to build upon.  

Empowerment 

And that brings us to what Elijah does next. After telling the king to hop on his chariot and get home before the roads get flooded out (at which I am sure the king looked at him as if he was crazy) we are told that the hand of the Lord was on Elijah. He girded up his loins (wrapped his robes up around his legs for free movement) and then outran the king in his chariot, beating him to the gates of the city.  

That is a promise to us too. We have waited on the Lord. We have prayed and endured even when it was hard. And God has sent us the signs – the little clouds on the horizon. Now, as the hand of the Lord comes upon us, he will empower us to run to meet the challenge and the opportunity before us. 

So, you see. Isaac and Elijah have not just come to us today to receive the grace of baptism. They have come with their family to bring us messages from God, messages of hope and promise and possibility. They have come to challenge us to gird up our loins to prepare for an exciting future. 

Worship, at Knox Preston, begins at 4:00 pm

Worship begins at 10:00 am

Worship begins at 10:00 am

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Knox Preston, 5 January, 2025 © Scott McAndless 
Genesis 23:1-16, Psalm 34:15-22, Luke 7:11-17 

We are fast approaching something very special – in two weeks we will finally celebrate the fulfilment of a long and sometimes difficult process of amalgamation. On January 19, we will join together at St. Andrew’s in Hespeler and we will become something new – an amalgamated congregation.  

Up until now, however, we have mostly been working towards this separately. And I’d like to take a little bit of time to bring the folks from St. Andrew’s up to date on how the folks from Knox have experienced this.  

A Metaphor 

In many of their discussions, there was one particular metaphor that they kept coming back to. They talked about it as a marriage. When they were looking for a partner in an amalgamation, they used words like “dating” and “courting.” They even came to look at their participation in our summer experiment as a kind of “speed dating.” 

And do you remember the congregational meetings that we held back in the beginning of November? Each congregation had to separately hold a vote to decide if we wanted to begin the process of working out the details of an amalgamation. And Preston met a week before Hespeler. They said, yes, that they wanted to come together with St. Andrew’s. And then they had to wait seven days to hear our answer. 

Any guesses how that felt? It felt as if they were down on their knees, holding out that jewellery box with the engagement ring and the one they were proposing to just said, “Hey, can I get back to you in a week?” It made for a bit of an emotional roller-coaster.  

Isaac and Rebekah’s Wedding 

With all of that in mind, I would like to embrace that marriage metaphor as we think of what is going to happen in a couple of weeks. In fact, I have concepts of a plan to preach about the wedding of Isaac and Rebekah on that day. But I would notice today that there is something important that comes before that marriage. 

Today we read the story about what happened before the joyous wedding of Isaac and Rebekah – the sad death and burial of Sarah, Isaac’s mother. We sometimes don’t realize that there is a connection between the two stories because we tend to read Bible stories without making those connections. But the story of Isaac’s marriage to Rebekah ends by saying that “Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.” (Genesis 24:67) 

Sarah’s death is only mentioned at the end, but it clearly looms over the story of his marriage. He has suffered a great loss. It seems to have broken him. 

Father-Son Estrangement 

But it is not just that Isaac has lost his mother. He also seems to have lost all contact with his other parent. How else can you explain it that Isaac is not there for Sarah’s funeral or for all of the arrangements for his own wedding. Abraham isn’t even there for the “wedding” when Isaac takes Rebekah into his tent. Isaac just seems to have taken his mother’s tent and gone to live in Beer-lahai-roi. 

That is odd, isn’t it? What could explain such a rejection of a father by a son? Well maybe, just maybe, it has something to do with the time when Abraham took his son, tied him up, put him on an altar and held a knife to his neck. Do you think that maybe that kind of trauma – even if Abraham did it for the right reasons (which is what the Bible insists) – might put a bit of a strain on a father-son relationship? 

Processing a Loss 

And that does bring us to something that I think we need to talk about today. I mean to celebrate a wonderful wedding in two weeks, but first, can we talk about the traumatic journey that brings us to this point? Can we talk about a congregation that has to process the end of a 134-year independent history? 

That would be hard under the best of circumstances, but some things made it more difficult. Due to the circumstances and some difficult decisions made by the Presbytery, the folks at Preston kind of felt up against the wall. They had a very difficult timeline and a necessity imposed upon them by the Presbytery. 

Now, maybe this was a necessary thing. Maybe nothing at all good would have come out of this without that external pressure. I don’t mean to judge it. But I’m sure that you can understand how that felt. It might have felt a little bit like being tied up, laid upon an altar of sacrifice and having a knife held to your throat!  

So, if we are like Isaac and heading towards a joyous wedding, let’s also recognize that we are also like Isaac in that we are carrying some grief and scars and maybe even some unprocessed trauma as we limp towards this wedding. And I can’t help but feel as if the passage we read this morning might have some advice for us where we are right now. 

Isaac’s Anger 

The first thing I would note is this: Isaac really doesn’t seem to process his grief for what he has lost very well. He is completely absent as his mother is laid in the tomb. This is clearly not because he didn’t love his mother or because he doesn’t feel her loss. I believe it has to do with his resentment of his father. His anger at what his dad has done prevents him from properly grieving his loss.  

Now, anger is a part of grief. Psychologist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross famously identified anger as one of the essential stages in grief. We need to accept the anger that we feel and process it by asking where it has come from and whether it is legitimate. But getting stuck in anger doesn’t help you. And that is what Isaac seems to have done, and it is probably one good reason why he struggled unnecessarily with his loss for so long.  

The endings we are marking this month are real. And the rituals and services that will be held are there to help you to work through that in constructive ways. I hope you don’t make the mistake that Isaac made and rob yourself of the opportunity they give you because you are mad at Presbytery or any leadership that has brought us to this place. You won’t hurt the people who you feel have hurt you; you will likely only hurt yourself. 

Abraham Comes to Terms with his Nomadism 

So, that is what we can learn from Isaac’s grief. What can we learn from Abraham’s? The death of Sarah seems to force Abraham to come to terms with his nomadic status. He has been living in Canaan as a wanderer for a very long time and has done very well with such a status, so much so that the Hittites see him as “a mighty prince” living among them. He has never suffered from having no place to call home until the loss of Sarah hits him like a ton of bricks. All of a sudden, he realizes that he needs a place where he feels like he belongs.  

And I am sure that the folks at Knox can relate to some of the things that Abraham is feeling. You are losing an anchor in your lives, a place that helped you to know who you were and where you belonged. It is at moments like this that you realize, like Abraham, that you need to find new places of belonging. 

Will Abraham Pay? 

And that is what this whole passage is about. Abraham sets out to find that place much like the folks at Preston set out to find a partner. But the interesting thing about this particular story is the whole question of whether Abraham is going to pay for it.  

Once Abraham has discovered the place where his family can belong for all time, he goes to the Hittites to try to obtain it. They react strangely to say the least. Both the Hittites as a whole and the man who actually owns the property want him to have it. They want him to have a place. But they insist that they don’t want him to pay for it. 

It is hard to know what is going on here. Perhaps it is just a unique look into the ways in which people bartered in that culture. That might be what going on when Abraham keeps on insisting that he must pay until finally Ephron says, “My lord, listen to me; a piece of land worth four hundred shekels of silver—what is that between you and me? Bury your dead.” And that is the price that Abraham finally pays. 

Why it’s Important to Invest 

But more than an insight into how such things were done in that culture, I suspect that this exchange is there to teach us something today. When you are going through a great loss, the people around you, if they are compassionate people, may well react like the Hittites in this story. They may say to you, “No, you have suffered too much; you have lost too much. You shouldn’t have to pay anything more. Let us just take care of everything now. That comes, to be sure, from a place of care. But it is not necessarily the most helpful thing.  

Abraham is wise enough to recognize that that isn’t going to work – that he can’t just be given a place and feel that it truly belongs to him. It must cost him something or something inside him will always tell him that it is not really his. This too is an essential part of the grieving process. You must decide to invest in something new moving forward and, until you do, your natural process of grief may be stunted. 

Why You may Hesitate to Invest 

And I think there is an important message in that for us. Coming out of a difficult experience of loss, you may be tempted to coast. You may hesitate to invest yourself too readily into the life of the amalgamated congregation or wherever else your next stop in your personal spiritual journey may lead you. 

That is perhaps understandable. You have been burned before. The last time you invested in a religious community maybe it let you down. But do not listen to the Hittites around you, or maybe the Hittites inside your own head, who are saying, “what is that between you and me?” The Hittites may be telling you to step back and hesitate to engage yourself but Abraham says, take a risk; step forward with your 400 shekels of silver. Get involved. 

More than Money 

And I hope that you understand in that that I am not merely talking about making a commitment for financial support. Sure, that is important, but it is hardly the only way, and I am not even sure that it is the most important part when it comes to dealing with the grief and loss that you have suffered. 

Maybe concentrate at first on making new connections – put yourself forward as a new friend. And you who are welcoming new people into already established groups, welcome people as new friends with the expectation that they have wisdom and valuable contributions to bring, because they do. 

And most of all, find a place where you can step in and begin to contribute your time and energy and the gifts and abilities that God has given you. This may be a risk. What if you get something wrong or make a mistake in this new context? No one can guarantee that nothing will go wrong. But Abraham understood that if you do not take a risk, you may never discover where you truly belong. 

Loss and Opportunity 

Abraham came to Canaan as an outsider, a wanderer who did not belong. Isn’t it interesting that the first foothold he found in this new land came on the heels of the greatest loss he ever suffered, the loss of his wife. This is a reminder that grief and loss cannot be avoided in life, but such times also offer us the greatest opportunities to find ourselves and our place in the life that God gives us. 

The wedding is coming. It will be an opportunity for celebration and joy. But take note of where you are now. Perhaps there is a reason why God has brought you here as well. 

Worship begins at 10:30 am.

Worship begins at 10:30 am.