The Truly Reformed Pastor

Peter’s reformation by the Song of Songs

Photo by Bennett Williamson on Unsplash

As a Greek professor recently pointed out online, knowing a little Greek can tempt one to make too much out of too little. The example was John 21:15-17 when Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love [agapaō] me?”, and Peter answers, “Yes Lord, you know that I love [phileō] you.” Whereas many interpreters try to find deeper significance in the different words for love (ie, Jesus wants Peter to have divine love, but Peter can only muster up human love), the professor argued that agapaō and phileō are stylistic synonyms, and he encouraged Bible readers to avoid over-reading. It’s a good caution.

At the same time, John was likely written over three decades or more, and so the book is capable of almost unimaginable intricacies. When faced with the possibilities of a simple, surface reading versus a complex, deeper reading, chances are that the answer is “both.” The first or second time reading through John might remain simple and on the surface; agapaō and phileō can in fact be used interchangeably. But a third or fourth or fifth reading digs up sediment layers underneath that initial stone on the surface; while truly there, those layers are also impossible to see at first. Understanding John 21:15-17 requires these multiple re-readings which can unearth otherwise hidden gems. There is quite a gem to be examined here in John’s focus on the restoration of Peter as pastor, which leads to a challenging and encouraging message for pastors today.

If you aren’t in the mood for some long, complex intertextual interpretation this morning (or whenever you’re reading this), here’s the TL;DR:

In order to follow in the steps of Peter as commissioned overseers of the flock, pastors must allow themselves to be reformed into the image of the bride in the Song of Songs and her love for the Bridegroom.

If you’re down for the interpretive journey, buckle up!

Strange Wording and a Strange Word

I believe the answer to John’s strange switching of verbs can be found in another strange word: ungrammaticality. I discovered the concept of ungrammaticality in Ann Roberts Winsor’s study of John’s allusions to the Song of Songs. An ungrammaticality is any strange and unexpected grammar/syntax/vocab that prompts the reader to look outside the primary text for answers to the unexpected details. Here is Roberts Winsor’s longer explanation:

“An ‘ungrammaticality’ refers to a textual enigma…[A]ny textual circumstance in which there is a ‘glitch,’ a situation where the reader feels that he or she has missed something, that the details are contradictory, that the text does not make sense…The ungrammaticalities are stumbling blocks whose meaning becomes clear only at a deeper level of reading; although they seem obscure, they are the key to understanding. A textual ungrammaticality signifies that somewhere else, in another system, there is a grammaticality.”¹

It will be helpful illustrate this before moving to John 21:15-17. Roberts Winsor finds a “glitch” in John 20:14 and 16 where Mary turns around twice. Read literalistically, this would mean she turned 360 degrees so that her back was to Jesus when she addressed him as Rabboni. Rather than parsing and defining and diagramming this primary text, the ungrammaticality queues readers to turn (no pun intended) to additional literary knowledge shared with the author. It’s kind of like a hyperlink that imports context from another secondary text(s) without doing so explicitly in the primary text. So, Roberts Winsor argues that Mary’s double turning subtly alludes to Song of Songs 6:13 LXX: “Return [epistrephō], Return, O Soulamite! Return, return, and we shall look [horaō] on you. Why will you look [horaō] upon the Soulamite? She who comes like dances of armies!”² Similar to the Shulamite turning around multiple times so that others can look at her, Mary turns around [strephō] multiple times so that she can look at Jesus.³ Once this link to the Song is established, a long list of additional connections can be seen, which in turn open up deeper meaning to Mary’s encounter with Jesus.

So, with John 21:15-17, is there a secondary text(s) that provides illuminating context for these “glitches”? The glitches don’t just include different words for love, but also different words for knowing, shepherding, and sheep. There are multiple possible intertexts, including the Song of Songs, Psalm 114, and Ezekiel 34.⁴ Because of the echoes to the Song in John 20:1-18, and because the focus in 21:15-17 is love, I believe the Song is the primary intertext, with the others adding additional significance.

John, singer of the Song, makes Peter a singer, too

We start⁵ with the two verbs for love that sparked this exploration, agapaō (ie the Christianized phrase “agape love”) and phileō (ie philosophy, love of wisdom, or Philadelphia, brotherly love). These two words can be found together at the beginning and end of the Song of Songs.

As a song celebrating bridal love, agapaō (as well as the noun agapē) is used throughout the Song with reference to both bride and groom. The Song also opens and closes with bold expressions of desire using phileō: “Let him kiss [phileō] me from his mouth’s kisses [philēmatōn]!” (1:2); “If I found you outside, I would kiss [phileō] you” (8:1).⁶ Phileō can mean “kiss” in ancient Greek, whether as romantic or familial affection. I’m not suggesting that sense here, but the nearby occurrence of both phileō and agapaō in the Song fits as an allusion for John 21:15-17. This back to back switch is like an inclusio:

Song 1:2, “Let him phileō me,” followed by Song 1:3, “Therefore maidens agapaō you”;

Song 8:1 “I would phileō you,” followed by Song 8:4, “Why stir up or why awaken agapē until it wish?”

Furthermore, the last instance of phileō is near to 8:6, “For love [agapē] is as strong as death,” which suggests a connection to 21:18-19 when Jesus predicts Peter’s sacrificial death (see below).

The shepherding verbs of John 21:15-17 also echo the recurring reference to shepherds and shepherding throughout the Song. For example, after declaring love for the groom in 1:7, the bride asks “where you pasture [poimainō] your flock?”, and in v. 8 the groom says to the bride “pasture [or shepherd/tend, poimainō, same verb and imperative inflection as John 21:16] your kids [young goats] by the shepherds’ coverts.”

The wording of Jesus in 21:15 for “do you love me more than these?” is another ungrammaticality; it’s not at all clear who or what Jesus is referring to. The phrase “more than these” is pleon toutōn, which has a possible echo in Song 8:7: “Much [poly, same adjective as 21:15, pleon/polys] water shall not be able to quench love [agapē], and rivers shall not overwhelm it. If a man offered for love [agapē] all his livelihood [bios], they would scorn him with scorn.”

Perhaps like the unquenchable and uncontainable love of the Song, the imperial waters of Tiberias (John 21:7) were not able to quench or overwhelm Peter’s love for Jesus. This is the kind of love Jesus gave to Peter by the Spirit (John 4:14, 7:38), and it is fitting that such an unquenchable and unoverwhelmable love be declared three times. It is love as strong as death. It must be, or else Peter will not be prepared for “the kind of death [with which he] would glorify God” (John 21:19).

Water from the Petra

There is further support for that imagery of unquenchable love when we allow for John’s propensity to combine multiple subtle OT allusions in one passage.⁷ The word for “lambs” in 21:15, arnia, is relatively rare, only used in the NT by John.⁸ While there are some synonyms in John 21 that appear stylistic rather than significant (ie the narrative uses three different words for fish), it might have made more sense to use one word for sheep because of the allusion to Ezekiel 34:10 (probaton, see below). So perhaps John used arnia because he wanted to connect another text. In the Greek OT arnia occurs only four times: Psalm 114 (twice), Jeremiah 11:19, and Jeremiah 50:45. Psalm 114 has additional echoes which make it a possible intertext.

Psalm 114 uses strephō (“turn”) two times. In v. 3, which says “The sea saw it and fled; Jordan was turned backwards [estraphē eis ta opisō],” that last phrase is identical to John 20:14 where Mary, literally, “was turned to what was behind her” (estraphē eis ta opisō).⁹ The second instance in v. 8 is interesting. It is itself an allusion to God/Moses bringing water out of the rock¹⁰: “who [God] turned the rock into pools of water, flint into springs of water.” The word for rock is petra, like Peter. The phrase “springs of water” [pēgas hydatōn] occurs in John 4:14 and echoes the Song with the language of “a fountain [pēgē] sealed” (4:12, ie, sealed like a rock) and “a garden fountain [pēgē], a well of water, flowing and purling from Lebanon” (4:15).

While I haven’t studied this in depth, the fact that both Psalm 114 and Song of Songs were associated with the exodus, and subsequently read during the Passover celebration, it seems logical that their association with Passover provided John with this combined allusion.

Like Moses after the exodus redemption, Jesus after his resurrection took Peter and turned a rock into a spring of water. Peter, who was formerly so hardheaded, worldly, fearful, and selfish that he could not be a source of refreshment to the flock, became one who would lead Jesus’ sheep beside quiet waters (Psalm 23:2; 1 Peter 5:2-3). In and through Peter’s repentant encounter with the risen Jesus, starting with his Jonah-like sacrificial dive into the sea (John 21:6-7, see part 3 of my series When Empire Comes to Church), Peter is brought into conformity to the Good Shepherd as one who lays his life down for the sheep, even one who is a rock that points to the spiritual rock which truly quenches thirst (1 Corinthians 10:4).

Feeding instead of being fed

Peter being framed as one who provides can also be seen in the view that the “more than these” of 21:15 refers to the many fish and the business of fishing.¹¹ Polys is usually translated “many” throughout John, and, though a different word, in 21:15 it looks similar enough to be a play on “the large number [plēthous] of fish” in 21:6. Maybe Jesus means “do you love me more than you love making a living and being fed?” This calls to mind the misplaced priorities of the wicked shepherds of Ezekiel 34.

As it happens, Ezekiel 34:10 is the only instance in the OT where the same words for shepherd/tend [poimainō], feed [boskō], and sheep [probaton] occur in close proximity. Actually, “shepherd” occurs three times in Ez 34:10 (twice as noun, once as verb), and “sheep” are also mentioned three times. The ungrammaticality in John 21:15-17 of varying the command between boskō and poimainō, as well as the threefold mention of probaton, suggests an ironic reminder of this weighty prophetic reprimand. Peter, as a shepherd, is prohibited from feeding on the sheep, from selfishly meeting his own needs at the expense of the sheep.¹²

Pastors truly reformed

Ok, I know that was a lot. You’re probably wondering why you subscribed to this newsletter only to be bored with language studies and intertestamental exegesis. But I think it pays off.

If John wanted his readers to consider this meeting between Jesus and Peter in light of the Song of Songs, what meaning would that add? This story of Peter is especially for pastors of Christ’s church.¹³ It is especially pastors that are invited and challenged to consider whether or not their love for Jesus rises to the level of affection and intensity and desire and longing and devotion as a bride for her groom.

Pastors, is your love as strong as death? Do you allow your stony heart to be broken open so that the living waters of the Spirit flow through you to your people? Are you willing to so fully identify yourself with the Bride that you see harm caused to the Bride as a form of hating and harming your own flesh (Eph 5:28-30)? Are you willing, like Peter, to sheath the masculine sword of power (John 18:10-11) and be turned around to feminine relational love (John 20:14; 21:15-17; Rev 1:12)?¹⁴

Do you know that Jesus loves you?

I believe those questions follow from this intertextual reading. They are symbolically deep applications of Martin Luther’s first thesis, that our entire life be one of repentance. Peter was truly reformed by the work of the Son and the Spirit, and that true inner reformation was mediated by the Song of Songs. But we must go further lest we succumb to the spirit of law, as if Peter’s love was in his power. As Martin Luther put it, “The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it. The love of man comes into being through that which is pleasing to it.”

Using the lens of the Song in John 21:15-17, the allusion implies, without overtly stating, Jesus’ love for Peter—the Groom’s love for his Bride, and all who tend to her.

It is only Jesus’ love that meets the exalted desire of being “kissed with the kisses of his mouth” (Song 1:2).

It is only Jesus’ love that is as strong as death (Song 8:6).

It is only Jesus’ love that can’t be quenched or overwhelmed (Song 8:7).

It is only Jesus that is the rock from whom the Spirit turns springs of living water toward the flock of God (Psalm 114:8).

It is only Jesus who offered all his life [βίος] for love [ἀγάπη], and was scorned with scorn (Song 8:7).

It is only this Jesus who can draw forth bridal love that satisfies pastors’ souls and truly reforms them into safe shepherds of the flock.

1. Ann Roberts Winsor, A King is Bound in the Tresses: Allusions to the Song of Songs in the Fourth Gospel (New York, Peter Lang Publishing, 1999), 8.

2. All OT quotations are from the New English Translation of the Septuagint.

3. Although the text only says she “looks” [theōreō] at the “gardener”, v. 14

4. Genesis 37 is another interesting possibility, but I haven’t reflected on it in detail. Like the Song and John 21, Genesis 37 alternates between Jacob loving (agapaō) Joseph more than all his sons, and the sons seeing that Jacob loved (phileō) Joseph more than them.

5. I get the language of John as a “singer of the Song” from

Aimee Byrd

.

6. All OT quotations are from the New English Translation of the Septuagint.

7. For another example of this, see my post Thunder Happened:

8. Once in John 21:15, and twenty-nine times in Revelation)

9.

Scot McKnight

, The Second Testament.

10. See Exodus 17:1-7; Numbers 20:1-13; Deuteronomy 8:15.

11. Yes, I realize I also suggested that phrase alludes to Song 8:7, but I don’t think it’s either/or; such is the depth and wonder of this Gospel from John the Theologian!

12. As turning has also been a notable keyword in these allusions, it is worth mentioning that God says of the shepherds “I will turn them back so as not to shepherd my sheep,” apostrephō, related to the similar words for turning in John 20 and 21.

13. Even though there are other legitimate ways of reading and applying this story to all believers.

14. I should have specified at the outset, but because of Peter’s male gender it was natural to direct this post to male pastors. I would love to hear how a female pastor might follow this reading. Also, “Turned around” is a repeated allusion John makes to the Song of Songs; see John 20:14, 16; 21:20; Rev 1:12; and Song 6:13. Furthermore, perhaps Peter being connected to the bride of the Song conforms to the pattern of gender chiasm I explored at the end of my series on gender in the Gospel of John.