The Pastures of God’s Love

1 Peter tells the elders that they must agree to take care of God’s people, and that they must see this as a calling from God, not as an office carrying prestige or financial reward. Their calling is not to be elevated above the flock, but to be given over to the flock’s well-being.

The gorgeous painted altarpiece of Augustine’s consecration as bishop of Hippo rather undermines that point. The fifteenth-century artist has depicted a contemporary (rather than fourth-century) consecration of great lavishness. The consecrating bishops and the bishop-to-be are wearing richly embroidered robes, and their mitres and gloves are jewelled. The ‘flock’ are conspicuous by their absence, unless represented by the face peering through at the far right of the picture; but even he is probably a portrait of a donor, rather than a symbol of the people to whom a bishop is called. Augustine’s face is serious, but there is no doubt that this is a man entering into a great office, with pomp and ceremony.

Augustine himself tells a different story. In a sermon, preached to his people after he had been their bishop for many years, Augustine describes how he was seized upon and ordained priest with no preparation and little opportunity to discern a calling. ‘A servant ought not to oppose his Lord’, Augustine writes, ruefully, very much in the spirit of 1 Peter 5:6: even bishops are humble ‘under the mighty hand of God’ (Ramsey 2007: 407).

He was bishop of Hippo for over thirty years, describing it as a task compelled by love—of God and of God’s people. As the ambitious young Augustine takes up this yoke as the servant of an obscure community at the edge of the Empire, as the intellectual turns his hand to the education of his people, as the contemplative takes on the management of a divided and unruly province, Augustine lives out an exegesis of 1 Peter 5.

References

Brown, Peter. 1967. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (London: Faber and Faber)

Ramsey, Boniface (ed.). 2007. St Augustine: Essential Sermons, Sermon 355, trans. by Edmund Hill (New York: New City Press)

This third-century sculpture shares the imagery of 1 Peter 5:2, which reminds the elders of the Church to ‘tend the flock’. Such labour was no pastoral idyll; it could be back-breaking and dangerous. Although the stone’s natural reddish-orange veining adds life to the sculpture, it also—perhaps by coincidence rather than design—makes it seem stained, as though with sweat or even blood.

The shepherd is strong, however—carrying the weight of the large sheep with practised ease; the naturalistic folds of his tunic falling evenly. There is a peaceful familiarity between shepherd and sheep. The sheep sits securely on the shepherd’s shoulders, feeling the anchor of his hand, with no need to struggle against it.

Heavily worn over the centuries, the carving now seems to run shepherd and sheep into each other: it is hard to tell where the shepherd’s hair ends and the sheep’s coat begins. The appearance of symbiosis and interdependence between the two has been deepened by the blurring of time. Without the sheep, there is no employment for the shepherd, just as without the shepherd there is no nourishment and safety for the sheep. 1 Peter 5 is speaking to shepherds, not sheep, but the image reminds the elders of their own sense of purpose and their own need of the flock they have been called to tend.

The carved face of the shepherd is attractive, with large eyes and a benevolent expression. The sculpture was later refashioned as a fountain, and the opening made to channel water through the shepherd’s mouth now makes it appear that he is singing—as a shepherd might (perhaps to give reassurance to the sheep he is carrying, or perhaps to call the rest of the flock). The utilitarian alteration has, touchingly, emphasized a theological point: this is an image of the Good Shepherd, whose sheep know his voice (John 10:27).

While 1 Peter 5 calls Christian shepherds to care for their sheep, it reminds them that the shepherds are themselves also the flock. In this sculpture, the bishop is both sheep and shepherd. There is a ‘chief shepherd’ (v.4), who cares for the carers. They are carried by Christ, as they carry others; they risk all for the flock because all was risked for them.

El Greco’s picture of Peter makes a connection between Peter’s repentant tears and his worthiness to carry the keys that hang beneath his wrist. Peter is to be entrusted with the fearful responsibility of loosing and binding primarily because he knows that he himself lives as a forgiven sinner. Peter’s eyes are magnified by the tears that fill them, his hands clasped together in the fervour of his repentance; his whole being is shaped by the forgiveness of the one who has entrusted those keys to him. Peter is not likely to rush to harsh judgements of others.

The Gospels describe Peter setting off, with typical self-confidence, to follow Jesus after his arrest, and to stay with him come what may (Matthew 26:35, 58; Mark 14:31, 54; Luke 22:33, 54). Yet within hours, Peter is denying any knowledge of Jesus at all (Matthew 26:69–75; Mark 14:66–72; Luke 22:54–62; John 18:15–27).

But the Synoptic Gospels also suggest that Peter was the only disciple there at the time. Perhaps, from among their circle, only he and Jesus knew the full import of what happened in his denial (Luke 22:61). When, after the resurrection, Jesus seeks out Peter in the moving scene depicted in John 21, the conversation is still only between Jesus and Peter. Yet it never occurs to Peter to keep this private: he knows that this is what makes it possible for him to be a shepherd of God’s flock; the discipline of humility is an essential part of his leadership.

The elders to whom 1 Peter 5 is addressed are not encouraged to dwell on their own merits: they are told to be humble, to trust in God’s care, to be disciplined and alert, to think more of the sufferings of others than of their own, and to keep everything in an eternal perspective. No light task unless, like Peter, they are deeply formed by their primary relationship with God. El Greco’s Peter has his eyes fixed on the only source of hope, and so he carries the keys to the gates of death and hell.

References

Haliburton, John. 1987. The Authority of a Bishop (London: SPCK)

Marias, Fernando. 2013. El Greco: Life and Work (London: Thames and Hudson)

John Paul II, Pope. 1995. ‘Ut Unum Sint: On Commitment to Ecumenism, 25 May 1995’, www.vatican.va [accessed 13 October 2020]