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 I
stood before him in his spacious office. As he slowly signed his
name, he paused briefly and looked at me intently and asked me: “Do
you understand how important a name is?” Totally out of the blue!
And then, as he handed me the important document I depended on to be
able to stay, he said: “Receiving the name of Jesus Christ is the
most important signature you’ll ever need.” I have never forgotten
that penetrating question and that important challenge.
This morning, as you graduate from this Christ-centered school, I
want to ask you a simple, oft repeated question: “what is your
name?” You know what I mean: “What is your signature of who you
currently are and of who you plan to be?”
Completing this milestone in your education is a great achievement!
Congratulations. May you never forget the feeling of completion and
satisfaction you have from a job well done!
But I would like you also to remember this important question: has
our Lord Jesus Christ also signed off on your diploma, on your
character, and on your intended mission in life?
Like many others in his day, President Abraham
Lincoln ended many of his personal letters with this significant
signature: “Your Obedient Servant, Abe.” Therefore the title of my
testimony and challenge is this: “Your Obedient Servant.”
I hope that your heart this morning gives that signature to our Lord
Jesus Christ!
*****
As we reflect on the unique signatures each of us are
choosing in our lives, I want you tell you why and how being “the
obedient servant of our Lord Jesus Christ” has become the signature
of my life.
In fact, here is the signature for all my emails that I created soon
after the death in 2022 of my beloved wife, Marie:
Committed to love everyone
Because life here is so precious
Because death here is so final
Because Christ is Lord always |
I pray that my sharing the story behind my email
signature will challenge you and inspire you so that you make being
our Lord Jesus’ Christ’s obedient servant your signature that
captures your name as well as the purpose of your life.
*****
Here is my story: Donald Castelein, my Belgian
father, was converted by an American soldier he met in WWII. Having
taken on the name of Christian, dad brought his family to Tennessee
to study for the preaching ministry. My father graduated with
highest honors from Johnson Bible College and in1956 became the
first Christian Church missionary to the Dutch (Flemish) speaking
part of Belgium. He baptized me in 1957, as his first convert.
Do you remember your baptism as well as I remember mine? John Donald
Castelein had been baptized into the larger name of our Lord Jesus
Christ as the Bible says. I had a “new name, written down in glory”
as older Christians used to sing!
However, and here is some of you this morning can identify with me:
as I slowly created my own way of signing my character, I
experienced a profound intellectual, emotional, and spiritual
contradiction that would affect me every day for the rest of my
life.
If you can identify with this inner warfare, how I
pray my words may bring you hope and comfort!
During my high school years in Belgium, on the one hand, there was
my dad who preached weekly a conservative and devotionally inspiring
sermon. But there was also my Protestant religion teacher in the
Atheneum, the public school system, who weekly taught me a very
liberal religion as part of a very secular, Post-Christian Belgian
culture.
To varying degrees, some of you if not all, our graduates that we
are honoring this morning, are experiencing this same tension to
which I am confessing.
It is the tug of war between living in an increasingly secular
culture and trying to serve in a biblical church. Whose obedient
servant are you planning on being?
*****
My testimony is that even ten years of being a
preacher in various churches, and thirty-seven years of studying the
Bible, exploring religion, and teaching theology, did not make me
immune to serious doubts and actual apostacy! I say this not with
pride or arrogance but with deep shame and painful regret!!
As you leave this campus, graduates, you will be walking through
“the valley of the shadow of death”—moral, intellectual, and
spiritual death! Follow close to your Shepherd, your Lord, and let
his rod discipline you and his staff comfort you and you will be
part of the spiritual awakening God is bringing to this great
country!
If you are hearing me as a Christian who has never wavered in your
commitment to our Lord’s name, then share my concern about your
children, your grandchildren, and some of your friend no longer
serving our Lord.
*****
At three different times in my life, I felt like my
personal integrity compelled me to change the basic signature of my
life. To be explicit about it, I, John Castelein, Christian Church
preacher for a total of 10 year, I, LCU professor in theology for 37
years, at three separate times rejected our Lord Jesus Christ, whose
name I had been baptized in and into according to the Bible.
Listen, 2023 graduates of LCU, leaders of tomorrow’s churches and
ministries, if Peter decided he had to deny even knowing the name of
Jesus Christ our Lord three times, it can happen to you! I know this
so painfully: it happened to me!
I. The first time I rejected the name of
Christian, I was age 14. I was a rebellious juvenile. I turned away
from the faith inwardly and secretly, in my heart, while still
having to attend dad’s church in Genk, Belgium.
Do you remember if you rebelled against your parents, your church,
your church, your Lord?
However, God used tragedy to reclaim me into His family and into His
name! My father’s sudden death of a heart attack at age 44 resulted
in me, as a 16-year-old, rededicating my life and entering Johnson
Bible College myself in 1966.
How old were you when you for the first time wrestled with whether
your name, your signature, your identity was that of someone who
truly is “an obedient servant of our Lord Jesus Christ”?
*****
II. My second denial of Christ’s name occurred
when I was 66, now as a mature thinking person. In May of 2014, the
year I retired from teaching at LCU, I finally succumbed to all my
critical questions, which had been significantly increased by my PhD
studies in religion. I once again, at least inwardly, left the
faith. I even joined an anonymous online community of doubting
clergy, both active and retired.
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And yet, I still continued to attend the church and
my beloved Sunday School class here in Lincoln. And, during all
these years of internal turmoil, I was extremely careful to honor my
covenant with Lincoln Christian College, and later with LCU, not to
undermine the faith of any of my undergraduate or graduate students!
But then, once again, another very serious incident occurred. I
needed double bypass heart surgery in December of 2014 because
stents would no longer fix my problem. This emergency surgery
resulted in me experiencing an enormous sense of gratitude to be
alive.
I desperately wanted to say “thank you” to Someone bigger than the
doctors, the nurses, the therapists, or even Marie. Have you ever
experienced a thankfulness so all-encompassing that you know there
only God is big enough for you to say “thank you” to?
So, I firmly resolved to redouble my efforts at finding the living
God, through daily devotions, earnest prayer, and regular worship
and I did so--for seven months!
But even that second apostasy with its recommitment was not the end
of my spiritual journey. So, I need to ask you right now: how is
your own spiritual journey going so far? Have you seriously wrestled
with intellectual doubts, painful family relationships, your own
intellectual arrogance, irreconcilable church relationships, or some
hidden kind of unrelenting temptation?
That is why my signature states that “life here is so precious.”
Your life also is infinitely precious even beyond the grave! And
yet, have you yourself ever experienced traumatic crises--physical,
mental, emotional, or spiritual—that may have even tempted to
consider suicide?
If only you and I would never forget that immense
gratitude for life and for love! To whom do you give that ultimate
“thank you” to?
***
III. Totally unexpectedly, my third apostacy
started in 2019. I had been doing well-intentioned devotions and I
had worked hard in many church efforts. Graduates, please hear this,
I was not secure in my faith simply because I had started a
successful college-age Sunday School at our church,
Or because I had worked for two years in our Alpha outreach program
to the community.
Or because I had preached four times each Sunday morning for five
years at Lincoln Christian Church.
All the while I had been teaching full-time at LCU but even that did
not prevent me from eventually denying the Lord’s name a third time!
But Rom 8:28 promises you and me that “in all things God works for
the good of those who love Him.” Something enormous happened in my
life!
Early in 2020, Marie was diagnosed with the worst kind of ALS.
Bulbar ALS is that form of Lou Gehrig’s disease that does not start
at the bottom with the feet and legs, but at the top. It starts with
slurring speech, soon making swallowing impossible, and finally
suffocating the patient in saliva and weakened lung muscles.
Being Marie’s sole caregiver for the 22 months of her dying, I fed
her by stomach tube four times each day. I made it possible for her
to suction off the saliva that she could no longer swallow. Each
night as I tucked her into bed, I told her what a privilege it was
for me to serve her.
I almost daily bathed her from head to toe. It was one of those
times when I was washing Marie’s feet that I recalled the statue
that stood for many years in front of this chapel. It shows Jesus
washing Peter’s feet as told in John 13. And I couldn’t help but
wonder: who would invent a story like that--of a divine being, the
Son of God, picking up a towel and washing our feet?
Finally, my head and my heart began to connect, both reaching out to
each other!
At this time, Marie’s health demanded my constant attention. Because
she had fallen several times, I felt I needed to empty my home
office of all books since they were calling to me to be read. But my
mind had no time to master those books because my heart was
committed to serving Marie. So, I took all my books, except for two
Bibles, to the Book Barn in Forsyth.
*****
A few months later, Marie died peacefully with a
hospice nurse in attendance. And then one Saturday I recalled Phil
2:6-11 and reading it brought me to burning tears because it speaks
of Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God
something to be grasped,
-
but he emptied himself taking the very nature of
a servant, being made in human likeness.
-
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a
cross!
-
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
-
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
-
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is
Lord, to the glory of God the Father
Do you understand how important his name is?
Today, of all days, you seminarians will be given a very special
towel, as it were, bringing Jesus’ towel into your life and
ministry. As my beloved mentor, Dr. Wayne Shaw said, when he
instituted this practice: “This towel signifies that when our
students graduate, it is not for arrogance, honor, or prestige, but
so that they might go out and wash the feet of the world. This is
what we are about.”
Do you understand the mission this towel commits
you to?
My email signature summarizes what I have learned in my journey:
life here is so precious and death here is so final, but God has
given Jesus the name of Lord! When I experienced how serving another
emptied me of all arrogant pride and of everything of value that I
owned, I identified deeply with Jesus Christ who emptied himself to
serve me. I understood in my heart that he made himself a nobody for
me. Miraculously and almost instantly, he became my Lord for now and
eternity! The very next morning I returned to church to worship and
to Bibe Study.
Graduates, if you remember nothing else that I have said, remember
Saul, whose name was changed to Paul. Remember his changed signature
in Gal 2:20: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet
not I, but Christ liveth in me!” Not I, but Christ! Not I, but
Christ!
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