Mennonite Church USA

I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.—2 Timothy 1:5 NIV

In his second letter to Timothy, Paul gives credit to a parent and grandparent of his young mentee. Paul implies that habits of faithfulness can be passed from one generation to the next. Perhaps it’s more than a coincidence that I’m noticing this since Bonnie and I now have two grandchildren of our own.

My noticing also has to do with my recent participation in the sixth quinquennial national gathering of the Jacob Hochstetler Family Association. Jacob Hochstetler was a 1738 Amish immigrant to Pennsylvania.

The weekend was a family gathering on steroids, featuring plenary speakers, exhibits, genealogical releases, books and mementos, workshops and an official business meeting. I also followed through on the offer to see the last home and burial place of Jacob’s son, Joseph, who died more than two centuries ago in Juniata County, Pa.

As we registered for the Hochstetler gathering, we were invited to place a little star on our name tag under the heading of one or more of Jacob’s four children—John, Barbara, Joseph, Christian—to indicate our line(s) of descent. That meant I got to paste three stars on my registration tag; I’m a direct descendant of three of Jacob’s children.

In a plenary session at the Hochstetler gathering, one of the speakers commented that we wouldn’t likely be gathering as a group had it not been for a specific act of faith or conscience on the part of our ancestor. Because of Jacob’s belief in nonresistance, he refused to shoot at the warriors outside his home during the French and Indian War. He has become an icon of faith among his Anabaptist descendants.

I am so fascinated with the life of my ancestor and his family that I am writing a series of three historical novels about them. The first one, Jacob’s Choice, is scheduled for publication by Herald Press in the spring of 2014.

Studying about this ancestor and the events his church community faced during the French and Indian War has been a profound spiritual journey for me. More than ever, I am convinced that we are called to acknowledge not only our ancestors’ faithfulness to God but God’s faithfulness to them. If we open our eyes to the work of God in history, we can see God’s actions shine forth in our genealogies.

Yes, I said genealogies. Have you ever taken the time to ponder the many genealogical lists in Scripture? Most times they are accompanied by fascinating narratives, i.e. the book of Numbers. Some of the lists offer praise or blame regarding the life of an ancestor. But what strikes me most deeply is that the ancestors are included regardless of their praiseworthiness. Some fell far short of God’s ideals.

Consider the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1:1-17. Note that four women are mentioned in this list among the preponderance of men. All four were either outsiders to Jewish faith (Rahab, Ruth and Uriah’s wife [Bathsheba]) or they conceived a child out of wedlock by an ancestor of Jesus (Tamar and Bathsheba). Perhaps this list was one of Matthew’s ways of showing that Jesus would raise up a family of faith that included people with less-than-ideal birth circumstances.

If you read carefully through the Old Testament, this may indeed be the rule rather than the exception. God is the ultimate hero of all the biblical stories of God’s people. In the same way, if we open our eyes, we may make plenty of God sightings in the pages of our own genealogy books, especially if we are willing to read between the lines. That’s in essence what Paul was inviting Timothy to do.

Ervin Stutzman is executive director of Mennonite Church USA.