They’d walked far together, the dust of the Galilean roads caked into their sandals and skin, when Jesus turned and asked a question that still echoes like thunder through the centuries: “Who do you say I am?” It wasn’t a trap, it was the kind of question that opens a soul like a window to the wind. Matthew 16:13-19

Peter, ever impulsive, answered before anyone else could: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And in that breathless moment, something in the atmosphere shifted. Jesus didn’t just affirm him, he blessed him. Not because Peter had figured it out like a riddle, but because the truth had been revealed to him. A flash of divine light in a fisherman’s heart. 

And then Jesus gave Peter a new identity. No longer just Simon, but Petros, rock. Solid, rough-edged, reliable. The kind of stone you could build something enduring on. The Church wasn’t going to rise from power or perfection, but from this: an honest confession from a flawed man who dared to say, “I believe.” 

What’s astonishing is that Jesus entrusted these ordinary men, Peter most of all, with keys to something vast and sacred. Not keys to lock others out, but to open doors. To loose love into a world bound by fear. To bind themselves to justice, to mercy, to the relentless hope that heaven’s ways can touch earth. 

We may not hold physical keys or stand on literal rocks, but we’re heirs to that same question. Who do you say I am? It’s asked not in temples or cathedrals, but in kitchen sinks and crowded trains, in whispered prayers and fractured friendships. 

And our answer, spoken not just in words, but in how we live, still has the power to shape the world.