Judges 13:1-16:31

This is not a triumphalist article.

It is deeply human, existential, harsh, heavy… realistic.

If you enjoy happy endings, today, this is not your place.

We all know the story of Samson. It is as necessary as that of Joseph in Egypt.

But let’s forget all the introductory material.

Let’s focus on his last day of life. Let our imagination soar a bit. Without feeling the passage, it’s just information.

After

The last memory he had was well imprinted.

Not that he had any retinas left on which to imprint anything. He, one of the greatest judges of Israel, had been brutally blinded by his enemies.

He could still hear the shouts of joy from the Philistines when it happened. He remembered how, helpless, he was dragged by four not very strong men. His forehead was tied to the trunk. And the executioner brutally gouged out his eyes with a red-hot iron.

And then came the silence.

Not because the evening crowd wasn’t braying victoriously after years of being defeated by Samson. But because the pain he felt was so intense that no other sense could function properly.

The years of victories passed through his mind. The battles won. Being a person of courage and respect among his people. The feeling of his Creator’s presence in his body in a way completely different from any other human. The care his parents gave him. The affections he was exposed to. The expectations since before the womb.

All was lost.

Nothing made sense anymore.

He thought: What am I grinding? Wheat for the great? Barley for the poor? And what difference would it make?

They put him to do the work of a beast of burden: grinding, crushing, pulverizing.

From dawn to dusk, the ever-stronger Samson did only one thing: turn and turn. Push and push. Grind and grind.

He who once instilled fear and dread in any Philistine warrior was now a laughingstock for the children. They threw stones at him. Laughed at him. Spat in his face.

The important thing was that the Philistine people, from the tenderest to the hardest, knew that the great judge of Israel had been defeated.

What did it matter if it was barley for the poor or wheat for the rich!?

The situation would repeat itself in the same way.

Day after day. Week after week. Memory after memory.

The stone turned.

The dust rose.

The body obeyed.

Push. Breathe. Turn.

Push. Breathe. Turn.

And as the stone returned to the same place, Samson also returned.

Returned to the woman of Timnah, to that first Philistine woman his eyes chose before his spirit could say no. Returned to the riddle, the feast, the wrath, the foxes setting the fields ablaze. Returned to the gates of Gaza carried on his shoulders as if no one could stop him.

Returned to the dead lion’s body and the honey taken from within it. To what he touched, though he should not have touched. To what he ate, though his consecration demanded separation.

Returned to vengeance. Always to vengeance.

One blow demanded another. One humiliation demanded a response. One fallen enemy was never enough.

And he returned to her…

Returned to Delilah. To her insistence. To his vanity. To his certainty that he could play with danger once more. And again. And again.

Until one day, there was no strength left to play.

The worst part was that he knew…

And what he knew was heavier than the stone he turned day after day. For he did not carry it on the outside, but on the inside.

It wasn’t Delilah.

It wasn’t the Philistines.

It wasn’t his parents.

It wasn’t his first wife.

It wasn’t his people.

They had participated. They had hurt, deceived, pressured, betrayed. But none of them had put Samson in that prison.

He knew where it all began.

Not the day Delilah cut his hair.

Not the day the Philistines captured him.

Not the day they gouged out his eyes.

It began long before — each time he confused strength with invulnerability; each time he confused desire with right; each time he used God’s calling as if it were his own possession.

Samson had not fallen all at once.

He had descended step by step, calling each step a choice.

Now, blind, he turned the stone.

And the stone did not argue with him.

Did not seduce him.

Did not betray him.

Did not flee.

It just returned to the same place.

There comes a moment when life ceases to be what we can still do and begins to be also what we can no longer undo.

Samson must have known that moment when he opened his eyes and saw nothing.

There was no more youth, strength, freedom. There was no way to go back to Timnah, erase Gaza, take back spoken words, undo choices, put eyes back in their sockets. There was only the sound of chains and the mill turning. One turn. Another turn. Another.

I have thought that some forms of repentance begin exactly there: when we finally understand that God can forgive us without restoring the life we’ve squandered.

What Did I Do with What I Received?

It is possible to blame Delilah for many things. But Delilah arrived late in the story.

Before her, there was already a man accustomed to desiring and taking, advancing and then dealing with the consequences. A man set apart from the womb, visited by the Spirit, extraordinarily gifted — and incapable of governing himself.

That is the part that frightens me.

Because I have received much.

And I know no other honest way to say this: I have squandered much.

There comes a moment when explaining childhood, wounds, the people who betrayed us and those who abandoned us begins to seem like a desperate attempt to find someone to share with us a guilt that is ours.

David could weep, but the child died. Moses could view the land, but did not enter it. Peter went out into the night and wept bitterly. There are things that God’s forgiveness heals before eternity without erasing from history.

The Mill

Perhaps that is why I am so troubled by a certain Christianity incapable of standing before ruin.

Everything must end well. God will restore. God will return. You will receive seven times more.

Perhaps.

But Samson did not get his eyes back.

There are losses that are not attacks of the Devil. They are consequences. There are doors that God may not reopen. There are years that no prayer will recover. And to call this a lack of faith would be merely to add falsehood to sin.

The mill keeps turning.

And perhaps one of the loneliest experiences of existence is realizing that the one pushing that stone is ourselves.

“Remember Me”

Then there remains a prayer.

Not: “Give me everything back.”

Not: “Make it like it was before.”

Samson already knew there was no more “before.”

So there remains a small phrase. Brief. Harsh. Direct:

“Sovereign Lord, remember me.” (Judges 16:28)

Perhaps this is the possible prayer when we have no more arguments.

I have sinned.

I have squandered.

I have hurt.

I have not been faithful to what I received.

And now?

I don’t know.

That may be the truest answer I can offer.

I don’t know what God will still do with the remnants of my story. I don’t know what will be returned and what will remain lost. I don’t know if there is again a pulpit, a home, a hug, a child, a friend, or just some columns before me.

I only know that yesterday no longer exists.

Tomorrow has not yet been given to me.

And, by some mercy I cannot explain, today still exists.

When Not Belonging Seems to Make Sense

Throughout my life, I’ve met various individuals and couples who chose not to belong to a congregation. They had faith in Jesus, but for various reasons, they were not part of a congregation. Some even maintained a devotional life, professed their faith in Jesus to others, but were not part of a congregation. Occasionally, they would visit a local or distant church, but they did not maintain fellowship with any congregation.

The reasons are varied. And many of them are quite understandable.

There were those who had been deeply and unjustly hurt by a pastor, a deacon, or a group of people from the congregation they belonged to. This reminds me of Psalm 55:12-14, which we can summarize as saying those who live with me are not trustworthy. Other texts in this sense might be Ezekiel 34:1-6 and John 10:11-13.

For others, the liturgy stopped making sense. It no longer communicated anything significant to their lives.

I also remember cases where they felt they no longer fit in anywhere. They would go here and there and always feel like a fish out of water.

I recall others who simply became exhausted from so much internal conflict and weariness.

And I know of cases where they succumbed to the arguments of friends, family, ideas from outside where being a Christian was a reason for mockery and ridicule.

We could also mention other cases like periods of transition, illness, changes, and other circumstances that can distance someone from the community.

I think, then, that it is perfectly understandable for someone not to be part of a congregation for a while for various reasons.

The problem begins when a circumstance turns into a conviction: “I believe in Christ, but I don’t need to belong to His people.”

Sometimes You Need to Leave That Church

Not every departure from the institutional church means a departure from Christ. There are pastors who wound, sick communities, and environments where staying may mean continuing to be subjected to manipulation or emotional and/or spiritual violence.

Ezekiel 34 resonates with me in this regard.

If this were a sermon, there would be several divisions: 1-6; 7-10; 11-16; 17-19; 20-24 and 25-31.

For the purposes of this article, we will only consider two parts: 1-10 and 17-31.

In the second part (Ezekiel 34:17-31), it speaks of the responsibility of the sheep themselves, and the prophet says that God Himself will “judge between one sheep and another” and “I will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep.” In other words, part of the congregation is responsible for the weakness of another part.

However, I am interested in the first part (Ezekiel 34:1-10). The shepherds were tending to themselves while the sheep were scattered. And worse, this dispersion distanced them not only from the congregation but from the Creator Himself.

Ezekiel 34:6 says, “”My sheep wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill.”” To the casual reader, this means they went looking for other pastures or other places. And—while this is true—when we see mentions of high places in the Bible, it is an indirect reference to places of worship distinct from the places of worship to God.

See Numbers 33:51-52, where God commands the destruction of Canaanite religious implements “among them the high places.”

Or the wisest king recorded in the Bible who succumbed to earthly desires. 2 Kings 11:7 tells us that Solomon built “high places” for Chemosh and Molech, foreign gods.

Personally, I know people who—for perfectly understandable reasons—left the congregation but later associated with beliefs contrary to the Christian faith grounded in the Bible. This is what the “high places” are talking about.

But what makes the text vehement in its line of argument is that the reason for all this is that the shepherds care only for themselves. Verses 4-5: “You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not care for the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally.“

This is pastoral violence. Abuse. Violence. Manipulation.

So, leaving a congregation may be necessary; concluding that we no longer need a community is another matter.

The wound explains the isolation. The new conviction explains the self-protection.

If you are a pastor who scatters sheep, return to your original calling (if it is real). Take a look at Acts 20:28-30.

Isolation Can Cease to Be Protection and Turn into Autonomy

Being alone brings certain immediate emotional advantages. One of them is that no one contradicts me. There is a certain tranquility in realizing that there is no one else looking at me, meddling in my life, asking personal questions, correcting some attitudes and beliefs.

I can also—with all modern resources—create my own menu of preachers I like since they say what I like. (2 Timothy 4:4) I can choose the spiritual diet to follow and even have my own definition of which sins I consider important.

I then set up a personal “church” on the internet where all the “pastors” say exactly what I like to hear.

I have achieved peace. I have reached Nirvana. My soul has nothing more to worry about.

But the New Testament presents a faith in which I not only know others (as on the internet) but am also known. In this faith, we serve and are served; we correct and are corrected; we bear with and are borne with.

In these times, such a place is very uncomfortable. And you don’t have to physically leave the congregation to not be—in fact—in fellowship. It is quite possible to enter and leave all the services throughout the year and not know or be known by anyone. Society—increasingly individualistic—teaches and encourages us to isolate ourselves more and more and calls it “full life,” “empowerment,” etc.

On the other hand, it is wrong to think that all this is only due to modernity.

The epistle to the Hebrews, written during the second generation of Christians, still largely linked to the Jewish religion, which was a legal religion for the Roman Empire, raises a particularly uncomfortable point: there are people who watch over us and before whom there is some form of submission (Hebrews 13:7, 17).

Evidently, this does not grant absolute authority to any pastor. The freedom of conscience, belief, and practice continues to exist because we are fully responsible for our actions. Even for those that are a reaction to an explicit violation of our person.

But it also does not allow for a completely autonomous faith. And that is the point that hurts so much for those who—justifiably—decided not to belong anymore.

Following Christ Means Identifying with His People

The letter to the Hebrews is particularly interesting in this context.

The first to believe in Jesus as the Messiah (Christ) were Jews. They did not see themselves as a separate project from the Jewish people but as a continuation. That is, participating in the chosen people by believing in a Messiah who had been promised since ancient times fit very well with the Messiah now revealed and proven resurrected by many witnesses.

On the other hand, the Jewish religion—as we mentioned earlier—was a legal religion within the Roman Empire. And there were some special characteristics worth highlighting: it was the only monotheistic religion, and there was a form of covenant between the Romans and the Jews in which the former tolerated their religion, provided they made prayers for the emperor. All this in a region (the eastern part of the empire) where there were already provinces that had requested permission (29 BC) to build temples linked to the cult of the ruler. This practice would consolidate throughout the empire by the end of the first century.

The epistle to the Hebrews is written at least by the end of the first century. The author himself declares that both he and the readers are not eyewitnesses of the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. (Hebrews 2:1 “We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard”. Hebrews 4:2 “For we also have had the good news proclaimed to us…”) That is, they are at least the second generation of believers in Jesus as Christ (Messiah).

These Jewish believers in Jesus did not want to separate from Jewish fellowship. And this, in the time they lived, made a lot of sense. Enrolled in the Jewish religion and being tolerated by the Jews themselves, they became untouchable by the Roman Empire.

But if they identified as followers of Jesus as a divine being, and therefore outside the Jewish religion, they could be classified as rebels, pagans, and subject to all sorts of punishments, potentially leading to death. That is why the author says in Hebrews 12:4-5, “In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement…“

If we trace a timeline, the first persecutions of Christians date back to 70 AD, when—after the war between Jews and Romans—tensions between Jews and Christians increased, and this often also affected Christian communities. After that, the Christian movement began to be perceived more frequently as separate from Judaism, which affected how local authorities treated the groups.

And things worsened with Domitian (81-96). It is common to find references to repressions under his rule. There is ancient tradition, such as that of Eusebius, associating the period with suffering and exile of Christians.

It is around this time that the epistle to the Hebrews was written. Things were getting tense for Christians. And these Jews who had believed were abandoning the congregation (Hebrews 10:24-25), and they did so seeking to avoid death (Hebrews 12:4-5), which is a perfectly understandable reason.

Every Christian (Jewish or not) knew that things were getting worse. By the time of Trajan (98-117), there were already judicial persecutions and well-established procedural policies. There was not yet widespread mass killing, but we can affirm that by the beginning of the second century, there was real repression by imperial decision implemented in the provinces.

So, the recipients of the letter clearly knew the cost of being publicly associated with the faith and the Christian community. Some Christians had suffered, lost possessions, and been publicly exposed. What we would today call cancel culture but in a cruder version.

In this context, the “not giving up meeting together” of Hebrews 10:25 means much more than regularly attending worship. It is public community identification.

Some might see here a call to collective martyrdom. But nothing could be further from the truth. As Christians, we love life. But the truth that the gospel reveals is much greater than any social religious scheme. And precisely for this reason, it cannot enter into relations of compromise or convenience with any other type of spiritual manifestation.

A careful and contemporary parallel can be drawn.

Today it is socially comfortable to say: “I have my spirituality.” Advancing a little further, someone might say, “I follow Jesus” or even “I follow Jesus with my own convictions.”

More difficult is to say: “These Christians are my people. Yes, I belong to a concrete and imperfect community.” That indeed requires courage and full conviction beyond the status quo.

Christ does not call only individuals. He incorporates people into a body. His body, of which He is the head. (See Hebrews 2:12 and 12:23; Ephesians 1:22-23; Colossians 1:18; 1 Corinthians 12:12-27)

Congregation Is Not Attendance; It’s Shared Life

The solution to “I believe, but I don’t belong” is not “then go to church on Sundays.”

There is a tremendous superficiality and lack of fellowship in merely attending worship. Someone can do this without missing a single Sunday for forty years and still not be part of the congregation. Continuing practically alone. The only variant of the expression “I believe, but I don’t belong” is that the person believes but—in fact—is not part of the congregation.

My maternal grandmother lived in the capital, and with my mother, we would occasionally visit her. On the perpendicular street half a block away, there was a karate school. I must have been about 9 to 11 years old. I loved going and watching them practice this martial art. The shouts. The synchronized movements. The kimono. The tatami. The environment. The smell. Everything was etched in my memory. Years later, when I was 17, I taught programming classes in a neighboring city to ours. We had a twenty-minute break between one class and the next. I would run to see one of two things: karate training or a game of bocce.

Needless to say, I didn’t learn karate or how to play bocce.

No one becomes physically healthy by entering the gym once a week, wearing the appropriate exercise clothes, bringing a liter of water, and sitting for an hour watching other people exercise and then going home. Health requires a life in which certain practices become habitual. And that is difficult.

The Christian community works similarly, only much deeper.

But first, let me present some ideas about the word communion. This word of Latin origin (communio) derives from com (meaning “together”) and munis (meaning “charge” or “obligation”) and is used in the sense of “common participation,” “having something in common.” An easy way to remember the meaning would be “common union” or “common charge.”

Those of us who believe in Jesus as God incarnate and Messiah (Christ) share many things. Obviously, due to the nature of this faith, it excludes any other type of similar, resembling, or analogous faith. Christians share the exclusive faith in Jesus as the only and sufficient savior. Christians (regardless of institutional label or Christian tradition) are part of the same body and have one mediator (1 Timothy 2:5; Ephesians 4:4-6; 1 Corinthians 12:12-27).

There is no possible way to practice communion alone. It only serves to avoid the hardships of the disapproving looks of non-believers.

We pray together. We bear burdens. We share. We confess. We teach. We are corrected. We learn. We forgive. We celebrate. We weep. We serve. We are known.

These are things that society has always taught are not appropriate for the individual.

Salvation, therefore, is not just an individual thing, as much as it begins there. It is—above all—communal.

It is significant that much of the New Testament’s instructions contain the expression “one another.” There is no way to practice them alone.

(Acts 2:42-47; Galatians 6:2; James 5:16)

Perhaps the Question Is Wrong

When we ask if a Christian needs to go to church, we may have reduced the issue too much. As if we had placed a magnifying glass over only one part of the subject.

There may be times when we cannot belong. There may be churches from which we need to leave. There may be wounds that take time to heal. And none of these situations should be treated superficially or with indifference.

However, there is another question: “Is it possible to follow for a long time the one who made us part of a body while deliberately refusing to live as part of that body?“

The Christian life described in the New Testament does not seem to know a permanently solitary faith.

Not because God is taking attendance on Sundays, but because there are entire dimensions of the Christian life that simply do not exist when we are alone.

I cannot bear the burden “of one another” alone.

I cannot forgive “one another” alone.

I cannot confess “to one another” alone.

Nor can I easily discover where I am wrong if all the voices I hear were chosen by me.

Perhaps belonging is not simply an obligation of the Christian life.

Perhaps it is one of the ways Christ keeps alive and healthy the faith we claim to have in Him.

Believing is allowing the word of Christ to hold more authority over us than what we’ve learned to consider true, safe, and possible.

Túlio was an exemplary bank employee. For the last 20 years, he moved from branch to branch until he settled in that city. He started a family, had children, and he and his wife raised them closely and diligently. Raised in a Christian family with an evangelical tradition, he attended the local church with his family. Sundays, Tuesdays, and Saturdays, they were present. He contributed financially and was an active deacon. Internally, he was a balanced man. Debt-free. Of good reputation. He just had a terrible fear of believing. But he wasn’t even aware of it.

The problem isn’t simply believing.

We can believe in Jesus without allowing Him to deeply alter what we believed before Him. We come to faith carrying an interpretation of the world shaped by family, culture, religion, and political experience. The problem begins when Jesus contradicts some of these certainties. At that moment, we discover if we truly believe in Him or if we merely accommodate Him within what we already believe.

Peter on the Water – When Experience Says It Can’t Be.

The passage from Matthew 14:22-33 is well-known. In short: the disciples are in a small boat in the middle of the sea under strong winds. Jesus approaches. The disciples see Him walking on the water. Peter asks to prove that it is Him walking on the water. Jesus invites him. Peter goes. Walks. Gets scared. Begins to sink. Jesus reaches out His hand and says, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

Peter is not just anyone. He is a middle-aged man whose profession was fishing. He knew the sea. He had ample reasons from his experience to stay in the boat. He knew clearly that it was not possible for a man to walk on water.

Perhaps precisely for this reason, he asks to walk to Jesus as proof that He was who He appeared to be—from a distance.

And perhaps for the same reason, Jesus performs no miracle, He simply says, “Come.”

One single word.

For a few moments, Peter allows this specific word from Jesus to carry more weight than his experience. Then he looks again at what he had long known: wind, water, danger. He was afraid. He began to sink.

Of course, like any text, it can hold an allegorical reflection. We could say that the water and wind are the problems and that the path over the sea is the path we are treading, that is, our life. And while this sounds very beautiful—and we will end up drawing a moral or spiritual lesson from it—the account is historical and should be treated as such.

The fact is, the wind didn’t start when Peter got scared. The wind, the water, the waves, the boat, Jesus in the distance, the other disciples in the boat. Everything was there before. It was like this when he jumped over the side of the little boat and began to walk on the water toward Jesus.

So what changed? Prior knowledge entered his mind, and he was afraid.

Fear has this peculiarity of wanting to protect us from something. They say it’s better to be a live coward than a dead hero. (The Bible says, “a live dog is better off than a dead lion” – Ecclesiastes 9:4)

Was the prior knowledge to the walk wrong? No. In fact, these data had greatly helped him in the task at sea, which demands great respect. So his belief in these previous experiences (personal or not) was not wrong.

Thus, there are moments when believing means admitting that our experience is true but does not have the final word.

Nicodemus – When Religion Has No Category for What God Is Doing

Another well-known and interesting text for our point today is John 3:1-15

“We know that you are a teacher who has come from God.” This was Nicodemus’s introductory phrase that night.

Nicodemus is not an ignorant unbeliever. It is precisely his religious knowledge that makes the conversation interesting. Two Jewish teachers sitting on a cool night discussing their beliefs. A dialogue of equals in a certain sense. And his knowledge was not wrong. Jesus does not dismiss it. But He sees a shadow in all this. Something wanting to appear behind Nicodemus’s words that did not crystallize in his first statement.

Jesus (in His “Tramontina Quick Cut” version) does not miss the opportunity and proposes an existential dilemma that cannot be answered by Nicodemus’s religion: “No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”

Jesus speaks of being born again, and Nicodemus tries to fit it into the categories he already possesses: “How can someone be born when they are old?”

Nicodemus’s question is much more than obvious. It was then and is now. And the answer—within the physical realm—remains obvious.

However, from the source of evils that afflict us, the body is the most virtuous. Existential afflictions rooted in the soul need another type of answer.

So, pause and analyze: Isn’t Nicodemus’s dilemma that night similar to ours? He was trying to understand God’s novelty using only the religious categories he brought with him. The baggage.

Thus, sometimes our difficulty in believing does not come from a lack of religion, but from the difficulty of admitting that God is greater than our religious understanding of Him.

Peter and the Unclean Animals – When God Contradicts What We Learned as Faithfulness

This other text is also well-known. Perhaps not as much as the others, but I think it fits into those texts that deserve a second look (and which doesn’t?) Acts 10:9-20

Unlike the Peter of Matthew 14, here we find a different Peter. Particularly strong in faith. He is already an apostle, has already confessed Christ. He has already received the Holy Spirit. He has already boldly preached Jesus. He has already been imprisoned. He has already said that famous phrase “We must obey God rather than human beings.”

However, there was a small part of his inner self that still needed to be enlightened. He needed to have some beliefs dismantled.

An idea that troubled me for years is the full and instant transformation of a person when they convert. All my biblical knowledge led me to conclude that the transformation at the moment of conversion is deep, radical, and lasting. This inevitably raised other doubts in my heart: When did I convert? Am I truly converted? My beliefs needed to be dismantled.

So, when Peter hears “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat,” the most direct, correct, simple, and natural response that arises from his head is allied to biblical knowledge and the practice of a lifetime: “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”

Just as it happened with the betrayal and his restoration, Peter needed three redundant visions (like the three denials or the three questions about love) and a clear and strong voice that put an end to an era in his life (like the rooster and like Jesus on the beach), said—in the last two times—affirmed: “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

Peter, like Paul persecuting the church, was firm in his convictions. He was faithful. This is Hebrew faith in practice: faithfulness that makes the believer part of the body. (“the righteous person will live by his faithfulness” Habakkuk 2:4)

Note to those who already know the text: The Greek “pistis” cannot fully convey the concept of the Hebrew “emunāh” even though it comes very close. The Hebrew word conveys faith, faithfulness, or firmness/constancy. “Pistis” carries more faith in the sense of trust and can indeed carry something of faithfulness or adherence. However, it does not exhaust the Hebrew term, even being the best term in Greek to express the Hebrew without resorting to neologisms. The Greek term brings the idea of an act or attitude of believing, while the Hebrew drags the concept of firmness, reliable constancy. Thus, Romans 1:17—for Luther and the entire Protestant world and later Reformed and by extension fundamentalists and evangelicals—is read as “The righteous will live by faith ,” (note the comma. With this, I want to represent that in Paul we can understand that the person reaches righteousness from (“ἐκ”) faith) to the point that Habakkuk could be read “The righteous, by faith (faithfulness, constancy) will live” which brings profound consequences in the concepts of justification, redemption, salvation, etc. Then arises the problem of translations into Portuguese. What to do? Is it faithful to the original literal text or does it follow the interpretative line by understanding that Paul (of Hebrew faith converted to Jesus) writing in Greek follows the Septuagint? I am of the idea that it should remain faithful to the original text, and it is up to us—through exegesis and hermeneutics—to show clear evidence of this distinction instead of adopting the reformers’ interpretation as absolute truth. But all this deserves another article. Suffice it to say that salvation, justification, and redemption depend on faith and extend to faith. Outside of it (and exclusively it), nothing is done.

Returning to the subject of Peter and his vision.

As we were saying: Peter (like Paul) was being faithful to his biblical knowledge. The Law forbade him from eating unclean things, and he was faithful in this.

But things had changed. And the disciples (and many of us) did not fully understand what this was all about in the end.

So, some of the beliefs that God needs to correct in us are precisely those we learned to defend in His name.

Peter Rebuking Jesus – When Christ Threatens the Messiah We Want

Read the text of Matthew 16:13-23. I know it is known. But with everything you’ve read so far, there are some things that should jump out at you now, even if it’s not what I’m going to say next.

This text is very intimate, personal. It’s the small group of disciples and Jesus. They have just arrived at Caesarea Philippi. And the Jewish teacher, following the dialectical tradition of the rabbis, begins with a question: “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” In other words, what do people think about me? Who am I in their idea?

It’s obvious that Jesus knew what people thought. He had shown this repeatedly through dialogues, speeches, and direct confrontation. His disciples knew that He knew. So the question pointed in another direction. A more intimate one perhaps.

And the answers came, spontaneously and noisily. “John the Baptist,” “Elijah,” “Jeremiah,” “or one of the prophets.”

They reached the end of the options they knew, and I imagine there was a silence. The one that precedes the real question. I can imagine Jesus looking at all of them as if ready to present His most sensitive point. Then He spoke.

“But what about you? Who do you say I am?“

I imagine more silence. In Jesus’s gaze, the sincerity of one who with the question seeks to teach something more. And Peter breaks the silence: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.“

And I, guess what, imagine more silence. In the minds of the other Jewish disciples, there were certainly thoughts like: “He’s gone mad.” “Yeah. The desert heat fried his brains. He got here with abundant vegetation and completely lost it.” “Man… he’s blaspheming.” “How can an individual be the son of YHWH?”

Jesus turns to him and says: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.“

For those who like to study more: natural theology—that which intends to sustain itself only from non-biblical revelation and is obtained through the senses—can reach the conclusion that, considering what nature reveals, there must be a creator god. Paul seems to point in this direction in Romans 1:19-23ff. But to understand Him as the unique and personal creator, special revelation is necessary: the Bible. So, this general, universal knowledge, accessible to any individual, serves—by the conduct that this individual has afterward—only to condemn him. But to embrace saving faith, special revelation is necessary. (Remember Romans 2:12-15 and then vv16)

Returning to Peter’s declaration, it is so grand that it is the watershed of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. See the beginning of 16:21: “From that time on Jesus began…“

Something had changed. Something had profoundly transformed Jesus’s ministry. Having been at least two years on a well-known plateau, now the Master was resolute in going to Jerusalem, and He knew clearly what awaited Him in Jerusalem.

The change was very abrupt. Especially for Peter. Peter loved Jesus—as did the others except for Judas Iscariot, who was in the group on this occasion as well. In that love, he urged Jesus to practice what psychology today calls self-care. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!“

There was no doubt that Peter was fully aware that the panorama Jesus painted was nothing comfortable and ended in death. The part about the resurrection, no one understood right what it was about, even though the Pharisees and others had introduced this notion two hundred years earlier.

Jesus’s response must have echoed in the secluded place where Peter and Jesus were: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.“

Peter must have been stunned.

Just a little while ago, Jesus had said that he was very blessed because what he had spoken had been revealed by the Father in heaven. Now, what he had spoken only manifested earthly knowledge of things. And Jesus called him Adversary, Tempter, Accuser, Evil One

What had happened?

Peter accepted that Jesus was the Messiah (Christ), but rejected what the Messiah Himself had as mission and method.

In the common idea of the time regarding the Messiah, everything was combined. The one anointed by God to free the people from Roman oppression and along with that the political-military expectations around this idea of liberation.

It is possible to correctly confess the name of Jesus and still try to subordinate Him to the world we would like Him to build.

Therefore, the fear of believing appears when we want Jesus to confirm our worldview, but He begins to judge it.

Conclusion

I want to return to Peter on the water.

Let’s consider the idea of “getting out of the boat.”

We are not talking about abandoning our family, tradition, experience, religion, or political preference. That would be too simplistic. These things are part of the formation of who we are and can carry much truth.

The issue is deeper, much more: none of them can take the place of Christ

Peter did not discover that the wind was imaginary. He was not in the matrix, and Neo came to save him. The wind was real. The sea remained dangerous. The boat was, humanly, the safest place to be. And he was exactly in the place and action he wanted: walking on the water like Jesus.

The call was real.

The one calling was real.

But fear, or lack of faith as Jesus indicates in the following verse, made itself present.

All his previous beliefs passed through him like ballast. And they made him sink.

Following Jesus may require us to place our feet where everything we’ve always known said there was no ground.

Every Known Passage Runs a Risk

As a rule, when we first read a biblical passage or hear a sermon on it, we form an idea about it. And, as often happens, the first impression sticks. We all develop a way of interpreting certain Scripture texts. Perhaps later, we return to them to draw other lessons. But once we’ve reached a conclusion, it’s very difficult to see the same passage in another light.

What usually changes this perspective? Sometimes, a life experience. Sometimes, time. Other times, new learnings. But above all, the willingness to keep seeking, not settling for the first reading. The first reading is merely the foyer to a much greater feast.

Perhaps that’s exactly what’s missing. We are creatures of habit. And habit, when it comes to the Bible, can prevent us from seeing new shades in the same text.

One such passage is the beginning of John 6.

It’s a text as well-known as the parable of the prodigal son or the crucifixion of Jesus. And almost always, we end up with the same conclusion: “Give Jesus the little you have.”

This conclusion isn’t wrong. On the contrary, it does justice to the text.

The problem is, when we rush to the conclusion, we miss appreciating the scenery.

Why Believe This Story?

The account of feeding the multitude appears in all four Gospels. This, in itself, is noteworthy. After all, John is quite different from the other three evangelists. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called synoptic because they follow a very similar structure. John writes differently.

And he explains why.

At the end of his Gospel, he states that Jesus performed many other signs not recorded, “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).

Nothing there is incidental.

John carefully chooses the events he narrates. And it’s no accident that he places the multiplication of the loaves before the great discourse on Jesus as the Bread of Life.

Moreover, the Gospels were written when there were still many living witnesses of those events. Thirty years had passed since the death and resurrection of Christ. It was enough time for the apostles to see the need to record in writing what the Church had proclaimed from the beginning, yet there were still people who could confirm or deny those facts.

Either this story happened, or it would be a monumental lie.

There’s not much room between one thing and the other.

And a community willing to die for what it proclaimed would hardly build its message on a fable so easily disproven.

Starting then from the assumption that we are facing a true event, it’s worth observing some details.

Who Prepared That Lunch?

Jesus was teaching a huge crowd.

Speaking outdoors to five thousand people would already be, in itself, an extraordinary challenge. It was necessary to keep their attention, make the message reach those farthest away, not lose the thread of the conversation.

But there comes a moment when a very simple concern arises.

Who will feed these people?

Jesus calls Philip and asks where they could buy bread for so many. The text itself explains that Jesus did this to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.

Trials are always more for us than for God. They don’t serve to prove our faithfulness to Him. They serve to reveal to us who we really are.

Philip looks at the situation and responds in the most honest way possible. Not even two hundred denarii—practically the wages of two hundred days of work—would be enough for each person to get a small piece of bread.

Then Andrew appears.

And he does exactly what he had done in the first chapter of the Gospel. There, he finds his brother Simon and brings him to Jesus. Now he finds a boy and does the same.

“Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish…”

John is the only evangelist who tells this.

He’s the only one who says the loaves were barley.

He’s the only one who mentions the boy.

And this raises a series of questions.

Who prepared that lunch?

The mother?

The boy himself?

Who thought he would spend the day out and needed to bring food?

Barley was the bread of the common folk. Not of absolute poverty, but of the everyday table of workers. And those fish were probably small salted fish, used more as a side dish than as the main meal.

It was a common lunchbox.

Nothing extraordinary.

And perhaps that’s exactly where the extraordinary lies.

The God Who Continues Creating

We tend to expect God to intervene by suspending the laws of nature.

But this sign begins precisely with nature functioning perfectly.

There was rain.

There was earth.

There was planting.

There was harvest.

Someone ground the barley.

Someone baked the bread.

Someone caught those fish.

Someone prepared that lunch.

And only then did Jesus take it into His hands.

John calls these events signs.

And a sign always points to something greater.

Perhaps this points precisely to the fact that God has not given up on His creation.

We live surrounded by a spirituality that seems to want to escape the world. As if creation were just a temporary place from which the soul needs to flee.

The Gospel points in the opposite direction.

The Word became flesh.

God entered creation.

And, before that crowd, chose to perform a sign using exactly what creation itself had produced and what human hands had prepared.

The Kingdom doesn’t begin by destroying the world.

It begins by restoring it.

Therefore, perhaps the great lesson of this text is not just to give Jesus the little we have in our hands.

Perhaps it’s to learn to look at the everyday with different eyes.

Because God continues doing the extraordinary from the ordinary.

Five barley loaves.

Two fish.

An anonymous boy.

A family that never imagined the lunch prepared that morning would become part of the story of redemption.

Perhaps that’s exactly how God continues working.

And perhaps we are looking for His miracles in the wrong place.