If you talk to people who are converts to the faith, many will give different reasons for joining the Catholic Church. Sometimes it’s marriage. Sometimes it’s more mysterious – a kind of subliminal pull they can’t explain. Sometimes, it’s something very simple.

Not long ago, I was talking with a friend of ours who joined the church this past Easter down in Florida. I was her sponsor. Even though she’s about 10 years older than me, I like to call her my “goddaughter.” Anyway, she was explaining one of the things that drew her to the Catholic faith. She put it very simply: “It’s the history,” she said.

The writer and teacher Scott Hahn was a Presbyterian minister, and he’s written about his own journey to the Catholic Church in a similar fashion. His search for the truth of Christianity led him to realize that all the roots of what he practiced were Catholic.

In other words: this is where it all began.

And the moment it all began is right here, in today’s gospel. Follow the bread crumbs of Christianity back through the centuries, past the Presbyterians and the Methodists and the Anglicans and the Lutherans, through all the dense trees of theological debate that grew up over two thousand years, and you will eventually find yourself here, in Caesaria Phillipi, when Jesus says to Peter: you are in charge. And here are the keys.

There’s a lot to dissect in this scene. But one of the things that strikes me is this surprising thought: Jesus is turning over his church to one of us. He hasn’t sought out a temple high priest, or a scholar of the Torah, or a rabbi. He’s picked a fisherman, a man who smells of salt water and brine, and who has a knack for always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

He’s selected someone who will deny him. And who will challenge him. And who, when he is needed the most, will run and hide.

But Jesus has also picked a man of astounding conviction. The only one who wasn’t afraid to step out of the boat and even attempt to walk on water. The one eager to build tents during the Transfiguration. A man of action.

In short, Jesus has chosen someone who embodies the strengths and weakness of all of us. Our fervor – as well as our fears. Here is all the Church could be, and all that it would be, summed up in just one man.

Peter is us.

Jesus chose this man, his hands calloused from hauling nets and filthy from handling fish, and into those hands he placed an invaluable treasure, the church. A priceless kind of Faberge egg. Trusting that it would be cared for. Trusting that it wouldn’t break.

One of the other things that is so striking to me about this episode is that it all comes down to one clear, concise question.

“Who do you say that I am?”

Peter answers, and the rest is history – really.

But this morning I’d like you to think of that question in a different context. It is more than a pop quiz posed two thousand years ago to one of the apostles. It’s more than the set up for the creation of the first pope.

Rather, this is a question that haunts every heart. It is the question Christ asks each of us, every day, countless times, in countless ways.

Who do you say that I am?

Who do we say that Jesus is?

Is he just a figure from the Bible? A character in the catechism?

Or is he “the Christ, the son of the living God”?

Is he the one we recognize as our savior, and our hope?

Jesus is the one who opened his arms for us, and gave everything for us – and who left us not only his church, in the hands of Peter, but also his very essence, in bread and wine, to take into our own hands, and into our own hearts.

But still, he wants to know: Who do you say that I am?

He asks us that again and again.

And whether we realize it or not, we are always answering it.

Every choice we make – to love or to hate, to give or withhold – is a response to that question.

Who do we say that Jesus is?

The answer affects what we believe, and how we live.

This morning, consider that. Listen for the question.

Hear the voice that spoke to that fisherman all those centuries ago. Hear Jesus inviting us, challenging us, questioning us. “Who do you say that I am?”

And as we receive the Eucharist and go out into the world, let us strive, as Peter did, to live the answer, with the apostle’s own words echoing in our hearts.

“You are the Christ, the son of the living God.”