3 Tremendous Responsibilities the Shepherd’s Staff Represents
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A bishop carries something we call a crozier, which is really a symbol for the staff a shepherd carries. I carry one as the bishop of the church, the chief shepherd over the Diocese of Central Florida, and also as someone who is subject to Jesus’ ministry to me.
If I’m not yielded to this crook, I have no right to extend it to anybody else. It’s a deep reminder of the responsibility I bear to walk with integrity before God.
But the shepherd’s staff is so much more than a symbol of my ministry. It represents the three tremendous responsibilities we hold as followers of Christ, individually and collectively. Let’s examine them together.
The Shepherd’s Staff
Let’s take a look first at what the staff means to a shepherd out in the field with his sheep. Being a shepherd is actually a difficult job. It’s not the stained-glass window picture of someone standing there looking rather beatific. Not at all. Shepherds work hard, and they get dirty.
If you’re a shepherd, there are three reasons you need the staff. First, you need it because you’re leading the sheep out in the country. You’re on rocky ground, so you need a staff to help keep you stable. In that sense, it’s like a hiking stick. It catches you when you fall.
The second reason you as a shepherd need a staff is that it’s an offensive weapon. If somebody’s coming against the sheep, you use the staff to fight them, to keep them away. Your job, you see, is to protect the sheep.
Then there’s a third reason that you as a shepherd would need a staff. You see, sometimes sheep have minds of their own. They aren’t always very smart, and they need correction. They might wander off. When that happens, you can use the staff to pull them back into the flock, to keep your sheep in line.
Jesus’ Staff
Of course, these are the very things that Jesus the Shepherd is doing in your life. He wants to help keep you steady, particularly when you’re walking in a difficult season. He wants to fight on your behalf against the enemies that come against you. And if you’ve made a commitment to say, “I will follow you,” he takes you very seriously. So if he says, “Go this way,” and you’re going another way, he will use his staff to correct you, to bring you back in line. Not because he’s mean, but because he loves you, and because if you go that way, you could encounter a pack of wolves. Your Shepherd wants to keep you safe.
All three of these are ways Jesus demonstrates his love: By steadying us when life is hard. By fighting on our behalf when we need somebody to do so (and we all do from time to time). And by correcting us when we’re going the wrong way.
That’s who he is as a Shepherd.
God, the Shepherd; His Staff, the Church
But this staff represents not just Jesus’ ministry, or mine, it represents the ministry of the church. You see, a congregation must understand that God has given them a community responsibility, that they do not exist merely to build each other up, although they do that. They’re actually called to be the shepherd’s staff in the community where God has placed them.
So let’s look at this again from the perspective of the church as the staff of God, the Shepherd.
- Steadying: Who in the community needs people to come and stand beside them and steady them because life is hard? That’s the church’s ministry to the community. There’s a reason Jesus emphasizes over and over again: Care for the weak. Care for the sick. Care for the poor. Because that’s his heart.
A church that claims to be under the authority of the Good Shepherd demonstrates that kind of care to those in need, first, because we’ve all been the recipients. We’ve received forgiveness when we didn’t deserve it. We’ve received mercy when we didn’t deserve it. He saved us from hell even though we didn’t deserve it. He has steadied us in our walk. And if Jesus is steadying us in our walk, being in a church within a community means we need to take up this staff and care for others. Because that’s what Jesus is doing for us.
In other words, ministry is never something we only receive. It’s something that flows through, so the ministry coming into us is what God desires to flow through us. We are to steady those in need.
- Protection: Who are the people in your community who need someone to come and fight on their behalf? Because the system is not interested. Because neighbors are ignoring. Because family members are not caring. Who are the people who need somebody to come and stand beside them and say, “What can we do to help make a difference?”
It could be legal assistance. It could be education. It could be someone giving them what they need in terms of counseling and care. It could be prayer, because more often than not to fight the battle in prayer is often the thing that breaks loose in the natural what needs to happen in somebody’s life.
There isn’t one of us here who doesn’t need that. I hope none of us is too proud to say, “Oh, I need somebody to pray for me right now.” Because we all do. And God has built that kind of interdependence between us.
- Correction: In our society, we used to rely on families or bosses to work with people to help raise them up into positions of responsibility, who loved them enough to correct them when they needed correcting.
And we all do, right? Some things you never outgrow. But a part of what we’re wrestling with as a society is that people in responsible leadership positions no longer take time or care to mentor, to correct, and to reach out. And so we have many, many people who should have learned lessons that they’ve never learned, who don’t understand the need they might have for correction, because they think, “I should be free to do whatever I want to do, right?”
And the answer to that is actually, “No, you’re not free to do whatever you want to do. You’re actually free to serve. To serve the common good. To reach out to your neighbors. To care for people. To give sacrificially. To reach down and to help somebody else who might need your helping hand.
“You’re not free to spend your money any way you want as if the world doesn’t need your donations. You’re not free to take your time only to take care of yourself when there’s a world in need of men and women who are willing to care.”
All of us need this staff of correction in our lives. And if Jesus is correcting us, he wants to use us that we might mentor and help raise up others (including, when needed, correcting them) for the common good to which God has called us.
That’s what it means for a church to take on the ministry of the shepherd in the community where they serve. That’s what it means for the church to be God’s steadying, protecting, and correcting staff.
If Not Us, Who?
Sisters and brothers, if it’s not us, who’s going to do it? We’ve had too much of people saying, “That’s not my problem.” Now it’s our problem. And so my plea to you is first, submit to Jesus, to his work of steadying, of protecting, and correcting in your life. Don’t be what the Bible describes as stiff-necked. Instead, be willing to yield to his care.
But in so doing, be willing to stand with others and say, “How can we serve the community where God has placed us? How can we be that people who manifest the love and the power of this Good Shepherd, who has laid down his life for us, that we also might serve others, that they too might see the light of Christ, that they too might begin to stand a little taller, that they too might be willing to walk with a level of care and compassion and responsibility because that’s what has been demonstrated to them? If not us, who?”
May God raise up in our midst men and women who are willing to take this staff and say, “I, too, will serve for the sake of the Savior in the community where God has placed me.”
That’s what it means to be a follower of Jesus. And that’s what it means to be a staff—in his hand and after his heart.
Which role of the shepherd’s staff best fits you or your church? Which makes you uncomfortable? Share this blog and your comments on Twitter and include my username, @revgregbrewer.
(This post is an adaption of Bishop Brewer’s sermon on April 17, 2016, at St. John the Baptist, Orlando.)
Unless otherwise noted, scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.