Art by Mary Sarchizian (a.k.a. Art of Marza)
I wasn’t looking for Jesus, when I first found myself in an Episcopal church. I wasn’t looking for my eyes to be opened or my outlook to be changed. At least, not consciously. My brother-in-law invited us to come along one Sunday while we were visiting. Really, I think I went mostly out of politeness. I was in early recovery. I had converted to Islam, and I was quite serious about it. And honestly, stepping foot in a church again for the first time since leaving behind my fundamentalist Evangelical upbringing—it was disorienting. But I went. And I’m glad I did. Because that day, I saw something marvelous.
I didn’t grow up with any kind of liturgical worship. But the service was still eerily familiar—saturated with stories and symbols that I remembered from childhood… stories and symbols that had been weaponized against me as a kid. I had grown up surrounded by the Name of Jesus. And before coming out as gay, I had been earnest in my faith. But then I was told that my sexuality was proof that I was totally depraved and irredeemably rotten—unfit to bear the Name of Christ.
So by the time I left home, I’d reached the same conclusion as so many people we know: that Christianity was centered on a whitewashed sepulchre, not an empty tomb. The Church had come to feel like a place of hatred, alienation, and death. Not a place where the living God could be found. I’d been driven away from the Christianity—the vision of Jesus—that I had put my faith in.
Now, by the time I walked into that church, I wouldn’t have described myself as “doubting” per se. I would’ve said Islam had settled the question of Jesus for me. He was a great teacher—a prophet even—who died and whose followers lost their marbles, claiming he was risen from the dead. But underneath this certainty, there was still a kind of unhealed doubt—a wound where my hope in Jesus and in his Resurrection used to be. Under the surface, there was a part of me that still mourned the death of the Jesus who I had called “my Lord and my God” in my youth… A part of me that longed to be proved wrong… A part of me that longed to see Resurrection—the transformation of death into life and pain into joy.
Then I saw… something that morning in church. It was a Baptism Sunday. And when the priest asked the whole congregation if they would uphold these children in their life in Christ, the people’s response—WE WILL!—seemed to echo off the walls for minutes. And sitting there, a Muslim holding my boyfriend’s hand in church, I thought, “Oh… Oh no… There’s something here…”
Here was a community of Christians—a community that bore the Name of Jesus Christ. Here was a people steeped in the Words of Scripture, which I had recited by heart as a child. Here was a people washed in the waters of Baptism which I could still remember pouring over my head. Here was a people who embraced me as their neighbor with a tenderness which I had heard preached but never seen practiced. Here was the Church—the Body of the risen Christ—right before my eyes. I started to realize that day that—some way, somehow—I was encountering Jesus in that place. This encounter probably wasn’t quite as startling as Jesus’ appearance in a locked room was for the disciples. But it was an unsettling realization. Marvelous, yes. But unsettling and inconvenient.
When we got back home, I started going to mass at the local Episcopal parish on Sundays. But I didn’t say the words of the Creed or go forward for Communion. I just listened. And I watched. And over time, I started to notice something: People changed when they received the Sacrament. Not dramatically. Not all at once. But enough. There was a real transformation unfolding—Sunday after Sunday. These people stepped forward to eat and drink the flesh and blood of a man I thought long dead. And it changed them. He changed them.
It was as I watched this—as I saw this something, alive in them—that it finally started to sink in. Maybe Jesus isn’t just a teacher who died a long time ago. Maybe Jesus isn’t just some false Messiah whose dubious promise of salvation died when his followers rejected me. Maybe—just maybe—Jesus is who he says he is. Maybe he’s alive—my Lord and my God. I didn’t think I’d come looking for Jesus. But he let himself be seen anyway.
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We tend to frame faith and doubt in overly simplistic, either/or terms. Either we cling to unquestioning certainty staring at a fixed image of Jesus without daring to blink, lest he disappear. Or we enshrine doubt and uncertainty and ask questions without even pursuing answers let alone actually expecting to see Christ. But in this season of the Resurrection, I want to invite you to look past the binary towards a faith that welcomes questions but seeks after answers—a faith that honors the doubt but looks eagerly for the encounter with a God who wishes to be seen. That’s the kind of faith that I’ve seen God weaving in my life. And it’s the kind of faith that the Church invites us into every year on this Second Sunday of Easter when we hear again the story of “doubting” Thomas.
When we hear today’s Gospel, when we hear about Thomas—about how he wasn’t with the others when Jesus appeared; about how he refuses to settle for secondhand stories; about how he says, “Unless I see, unless I touch, I will not believe”—I get it. I don’t hear stubborn or obstinate doubt in Thomas’ voice. I hear bewildered questions over what’s going on. I hear grief over the death of who he thought Jesus was. I hear hunger to enjoy Jesus’ presence again. I hear that deep, aching need not just to hear that Jesus lives, but to encounter him again, in the flesh.
And the mercy—the marvel—is that Jesus doesn’t shame Thomas for that. Jesus comes back for him. Jesus comes to meet Thomas where he is—wounded hands, pierced side, and all—and offers himself freely, saying: “Here, Thomas. See. Touch. Believe.” Because Jesus is not interested in scolding us for our doubts and questions. He is interested in meeting us there—in opening our eyes to the Resurrection already at work among us— in making himself seen—in making himself known.
The takeaway from Thomas’ story is not that we shouldn’t doubt. It’s that in our doubt, we should hope to see. Because Jesus wants to be seen. The risen Christ wants to be known. And so he does not desert us in our doubt, just as he did not desert Thomas in his. Jesus comes to meet us when we seek him.
Our fingers may not feel the wounded side of the blameless scapegoat unjustly pierced by human hatred. But we can still see him through the eyes of resurrection if we seek him earnestly, even in our doubt. We can still encounter this stone which the architects of this world and its injustice rejected—Christ the rock, who has become the cornerstone of a New Creation. Jesus wants us to see him. And so he comes to meet us: greeting us in the face of our Neighbor, speaking to us in the Word, inviting us to touch him—to chew on him, to eat him—in the Blessed Sacrament of his Body and Blood.
Even if we do not see him in quite the same way Thomas does, when we seek him—when we hope to see him even in our doubt—Jesus comes to meet us again and again. He meets us so that he might lead us back to faith again and again. So that even in our doubt, we can say with Thomas, “My Lord and my God.” So that we can proclaim with evangelists and apostles, “We have seen the Lord…we are witnesses to these things.” So that we can glimpse the New Creation and say with the psalmist, “This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.”