Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, by the loving power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

As we have included so many of Paul's letters in what we know as the Bible it may seem somewhat obvious to say this. But I'm going to say it anyway.

Paul writes a mean letter. No, I'm not saying that they're nasty. Nor do I intend to imply that they're average. Rather, I'm saying in the vernacular that Paul's letters are exquisite, wonderful, profound.

Just listen to the phrases of support, advice, and reminder here:

- Faith lives in you.

- Rekindle the gift of God within you.

- Rely on the power of God.

- Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

- Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.

To put it simply: Hold on to the treasure of your faith. Hold on.

A fine word from a fine man in a fine letter. And a word that is always timely. Hold on. Hold fast. Keep the faith. Don't let the sufferings of this world get you down. Know whose you are and the unshakable grounding of your faith in the Rock of faith.

We hold in these troubled and troubling days to something that is not from within. Its source is not our selves. No. The One to whom we cling is from God. The faith to which we hold is a gift of this One of God.

We are grateful recipients of a grace that is not our own.

It has come to us, as it did to Timothy, in many ways.

But it has come principally through our ancestors. There is a continuum of faith—an unbroken chain of Christians—that is unique for every one of us, and that extends all the way back to Jesus. As is there a huge web of people who have made God alive for us, as was the case for Paul and Timothy. Gamaliel, Peter. Lois, Eunice. Grandparent, friend. Father, co-worker.

When we learn to hold on to the treasure of our faith, we refresh our memories. We bring again to remembrance the living and the historic sources of our faith, the experiences that brought faith to life in us, the words and the experiences that brought us from death to life.

You see, Paul understands that no human being is born an orphan. We are all born into a family. We have connections to other human beings that are a great treasure to us.

The Bantus of South Africa say, a person is a person because of other persons. We are born into relationship, we grow and live in relationship and we die in relationship. Our modern Western notions of independence and autonomy distort the truth about us. Transposed into African, the sophisticated Cartesian formulation Cogito ergo sum, "I think, therefore I am," would read Cognatus ergo sum, "I am related, therefore I am." To the question "Who are you?" the African would answer, "I am my mother's and father's child, of the lineage of so-and-so, of the house of X and Y, of the tribe of Z."

By which time the impatient European or American has moved on to other matters. Yet the Bible is replete with such genealogical material, and even Jesus is situated in its repetitive detail. When Matthew names all fourteen of the descendents of Jesus from Abraham to David, and then all fourteen from David to Jesus, there is good reason. He is not wasting paper!

My own faith comes from a long line of Danes. You may not know that both of my grandparents on my mother's side immigrated from Denmark—separately—and ended up in Omaha, Nebraska, where they met, fell in love, and married. My grandmother Andersen's name was the same as my wife's-Marie. (Her full name was Anna Marie Christine Hansen Blidegn Andersen—but that's more than you want to know.) She and Alfred passed their faith on to their children. And my mother, in turn, passed that faith to me. I say my mother, because she was the Lutheran, and it was the Lutheran church that she and my father chose, even though he was raised a Presbyterian. I am reminded today of my sincere faith, a faith that lived first in my grandmother Marie and my mother Edna and that now lives in me.

I brought along this hoya carnosa today. I'm not one much for object lessons, but I wanted to bring this because of its connections to my memories. You see, Marie, my grandmother, brought three leaves of a hoya carnosa along with her when she immigrated to the United States from Denmark. In fact, she smuggled them in; such things were not allowed. And yet, it is a treasure to me and represents my faith, because this plant here is taken from the hoya carnosa that my mother took from her mother's original. This is a representation of the life and the faith that has been passed down to me as a legacy—the life and faith to which I cling.

I don't know if you've seen the flowers. They only appear once the plant is root bound. They are glorious, little clusters of tiny waxy pink stars, and inside the pink stars a red star, and inside that a white star. And they produce a nectar as sweet as honey. They are for me precious in beauty and in memory.

At the heart of faith's fullness and power is the precious gift of memory, the ability to recall and reappropriate. Faith does not just arouse and satisfy the craving for individual gratification or fill our hunger for self-esteem, important as those things are. Faith connects us with others, grants us a name and an identity by which we can respond to God's call, and assures us that others know that name.

And so the apostle affirms Timothy's faith by a threefold naming—the names of his grandmother and mother and his own name. Wherever the faith has spread it has promoted and been promoted by this sense of names. As long as our names exist, the church has hope of a continuing community.

Our despairing age needs to be reminded of the Christian perspective on identity and names. Naming is a form of theological reasoning, a kind of discourse in divine relatedness. Scripture abounds with examples of naming as invocation, supplication, vocation, and answerability. Genesis speaks of the unnamed void as chaos, a profound insight. The secular tendency to see naming either as a diagnostic procedure or a judicial investigation acts like a vacuum, removing the thick layers of human interconnectedness. Religion rests on that interconnectedness.

Naming lies at the center of healing and wholeness. With it we remember, recollect, respond, act, and celebrate. Without it we invoke the chaos of Genesis, the chaos of modern disenchantment-diseases are named and individuals unnamed in hospitals and clinics; offenders are deprived of their names in courts and jails; the namelessness in workplaces drives people to despair. (Lamin Sanneh, Naming and the Act of Faith, Christian Century, 10/4/89, 875) It is easier to be cruel to those whose names we don't know. It is easier to avoid feeling their pain when we don't know the names of the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have died.

I heard a reflection by one of the psychologists who has worked with the families of the victims of the Murrah Federal Building bombing of 1995 in Oklahoma City. He and others have been convinced that the active grief of building a memorial there has been a healing thing. Those families are determined that this disaster not enter into history as another tragedy involving nameless masses of people. They are dedicated to preserving and remembering the names and the stories of those who died.

Recall a name, and you impart life; make it a family name, and you bring eternity to earth. We do not have to know philosophy to understand this. A name is a burning bush that illuminates human centeredness. Timothy, child of Eunice, child of Lois, is not his own. Lyle, child of Edna, child of Marie, is not his own. Like Israel, each is united in his parents, scattered in the tribe and gathered under the covenant. Each name is fed by blood, nurtured by human milk and inscribed in the soul. When it is called each answers as no one else can, the natural bow of the branch toward the stem, leaf toward root.

A well-known parable makes the point in another way. It speaks of a holy man who received a turkey as a gift from one of his devotees who knew it was his favorite meat. Following a large feast, the religious teacher was confronted a week later by some visitors who had heard about the feast. They were fed the leftovers. Thus began a stream of visitors, each expecting to be fed by the teacher's dwindling larder. Finally the last batch of visitors came, introducing themselves as the friends of the friends of the relatives of the devotee who gave the turkey. To the guests' chagrin the teacher emerged from the kitchen bearing a bowl of hot water. He emulated their formality by assuring them that in the bowl was the hot water from the soup from the leftovers from the turkey that his disciple brought him. No further visitors disturbed him.

The formal character of the story conceals a crucial insight into naming. The mere ceremony over a bowl of hot water is not enough to pass for real food. Real nurturing takes place where our name is known, where we stand not as a number or an object but as a beloved sister or brother in faith, known by heritage, baptism, and a shared place at the table.

Paul reveals today that we get to be part of the company of believers down through the ages who testify to a living faith, the faith of our Lord and his apostles, the faith of those who though they have died yet live. Those who cast their lot with a Lord whose cross and resurrection testify to the power of God have the rare privilege of holding onto and passing on a living tradition, an identity and name, a blessed faith.

Hold on to the treasure of your faith.

Hold on to your name—your heritage of parentage, ancestry, and place.

Pass on your legacy, that the faith may grow new shoots, new branches, new flowers, new names.  —  Amen.