A couple of years ago, I worked as the director of a drop-in community center called Uptown, which mostly served unhoused folks living on the street. Our headquarters occupied the basement of a church, and we saw ourselves as a faith-based organization. One of our clients, by the name of Tom, had a tattoo on his arm: a figure curled up with his face buried in his knees, arms crossed over his head. Below the drawing were the words “Doubting Thomas.” Although the tattoo was quite striking, I never got around to asking Tom about it. I guess I thought the image spoke for itself.

What it said to me is that doubt is heavy. Doubt is lonely. And to be a doubter, to occupy that role in any community of people, is to carry something that everyone feels, but few are willing to face.

In our passage from today’s reading—the final verses of John’s Gospel—we find the disciples gathered in a small room behind a locked door, huddled together against their own uncertainty. They have plenty of reason for doubt—they had just seen their Lord brutally murdered, crucified. All their hope for the redemption of Israel, lost. Their beloved rabbi and friend, dead.

But only for a moment, it seems. Before the night is half over, Jesus appears. A miracle. Dark death and hopelessness are transformed into peace, and the breath of God, and the Holy Spirit.

These verses are climactic, ringing with eschatological significance. And yet, all four Gospels acknowledge that this resurrection was not so easy to believe. In Luke, as in John, the disciples are together in a house in Jerusalem and, thinking that they see a ghost, “still did not believe.” In Matthew’s Gospel, they’re gathered in Galilee on a mountain where Jesus said to meet—and even at the very end, some still doubt; it simply says, “but some doubted.” In the Gospel of Mark, the disciples disbelieve three of their number who have seen, until Jesus rebukes them.

Yet the Gospel of John does something different. Unlike the other texts, where doubt is collectivized and therefore anonymized, in John the doubt has a face, a voice, and even a demand. John lets one disciple say it out loud—can this possibly be true?—and pushes it all the way to the heart of the matter—to the wounds of Christ. And let’s mark this—Thomas insists not just on seeing but on touching the wounds. For Thomas, “proof” of the Lord’s resurrection comes from entering the wounds—from his own participation in Jesus’ suffering. And Jesus does not turn away. He meets him there, in the very place of resistance and doubt. Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.

In touching those wounds, and entering into Christ’s suffering, Thomas the Doubter becomes the last and greatest confessor of the Gospels, proclaiming “My Lord and my God.” Following on this, almost like a continuation, comes another momentous theological statement: Jesus says, “blessed are those who have not seen and have come to believe.”

What has our Christian tradition made of this climactic, polysemous exchange of words, wounds, and touch at the close of John’s testament? What do Doubting Thomas and Jesus confirm or foreclose for us as people of faith today, living in a still-fallen world, challenged to hold fast to belief amid uncertainty?

In iconography, Thomas is typically represented at the moment of touch, the moment of revelation: Christ gesturing, disciples affirming. Obviously a valedictory moment. But I rather think that tattoo on the arm of Uptown Tom speaks a simultaneous truth: a Thomas crouched, wrapped around himself, almost holding himself together. Nobody cheering on the moment. That is to say: we still doubt. These two Thomases—the twins, perhaps—show us that there is, at once, truth, and it is possible to know and be certain—and also that there is doubt still among us.

So what do we do about that? What does Jesus want us to do with our doubt? That final benediction of his—blessed are those who believe without seeing—might suggest that doubt is a kind of failing, something we ought to strive against. Certainly, we’ve inherited a hefty theological corpus that affirms such a view. From the early church fathers to Luther and Calvin, we encounter sight and touch and sensory confirmation rendered as lower modes of knowing than faith; we read that true faith means trusting the Word and testimony rather than personal verification; we are informed, in essence, that Christ prefers the doctrine of sola fide (or “faith alone”).

How this all plays out among contemporary Christians—at least in my experience—is an instinctive, everyday discomfort with doubt. Even we Episcopalians—proud of intellect, inquiry, and debate—would rather “stand firm in our faith,” as Paul says, than crouch in doubt like Uptown Tom. Devout Christians of all stripes seem to struggle with the fact of uncertainty—a sampling of language from across denominations reveals doubt framed variously as a sign of weakness, a signal of a dangerous spiritual state, a tool of temptation, an obstacle to sanctification and evangelism; a “weed” that destroys faith when left unattended. 

It’s understandable that we vilify doubt in these ways, because doubt at its core implies at least the possibility of an unbearable reality—how can I convey the terror of doubt? Doubt is a glance across a black and empty universe, what it would be like if Jesus were not—what it feels like is a terrifying encounter of absence.

But Jesus has already shown us a very different picture of doubt. When Thomas faces up to and gives voice to his doubt, when he brings it to Jesus, he finds—and we find with him—not a lightless void or a frightful absence, but the real presence of Christ Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life. Jesus does not step back from Thomas’s need for concrete certainty; he doesn’t shake his head in disappointment or rebuke, but invites the doubter to draw closer, into more presence, more intimacy. In fact, into the place of deepest intimacy: the sacred wounds. Jesus says, all of me is yours—assuage your doubt by placing your finger here, your hand in my own side.

In Thomas, doubt is lifted and grace bestowed precisely because he does not fear to touch Christ’s wounds. We can imagine things might have been different—had Thomas, at the last moment, shied away from touching what appeared grotesque, alarming, or foul. If Thomas had quailed at the sight of the ravaged flesh—might he have carried on with just a little seed of doubt in his heart? Yet Thomas does not turn away—he insists on contact with the Lord’s suffering. He wants the crucified one, not a sanitized miracle. Resurrection must still bear the marks of violence—marks that are, at the same time, the very form of divine glory. And because Thomas did touch, his gift to the Church is a witness to the continuity between the crucified and risen Christ.

See what wonders a fearless doubt can do?

In the light of this Gospel revelation, it looks as if perhaps we Christians remain burdened by doubt—to the same degree that we continue to turn away from the wounds of Christ. After all, Jesus has shown us plainly: in my wounds all doubts disappear; my wounds are your shelter, your surety, your eternal guarantee. But so often we forego that grace—because touching the wound is no metaphor. As Thomas showed us, it is quite concrete. For us today, it means participating in the suffering of those around us—entering into their wounds, where Christ resides.

Is contemporary Christianity afraid of wounds? Sometimes. The early 20th century anthropologist William James even identified “two kinds” of religion – the “healthy minded” and what he called the “morbid-minded.” “Those who belong to the sick soul camp are those who focus on the sinful, the dispossessed and disinherited, while the “healthy minded” faithful exude optimism.” As the critic Michael Horton points out, “in American Christianity, this has meant that the ‘bad stuff’ has got to go: now downers, like human depravity and inability for self-salvation, the need for divine rescue, and so forth.”

This sharp-eyed assessment is not far off the mark, in my experience. Certainly, I am a Christian who is afraid of wounds. How many times have I prayed for healing—for myself or others—in a kind of language that demonizes the wound itself? Binding disease, rebuking spirits of infirmity, breaking the yoke of sickness—in Jesus’ name. Certainly, as Christians we are instructed to petition God for healing, to come to God freely in our many needs. And yet, if in our prayers we identify the wound as the work of the enemy—as something that is corrupted or alienated from God’s created world—then we cannot touch the wound. We cannot accept Jesus’ invitation.

For several months now, I’ve been interning as a chaplain at the UCSD hospital in La Jolla. It is a sanctuary for the wounded—indeed, a place where it seems as if every possible meaning of the wound is surfaced, considered, wondered at, touched. God, therefore, is present in that hospital in a special way—in every room, hallway, corner, office. Step inside and you will feel his presence. With patients—who lie in beds with their wounds and wish them gone—it is a profound position to be in. In one room there is Thomas, certain and proclaiming God; in another is Uptown Tom, crouched and abject. One man came in with an abscess in his hip, coded blue and, as he said, “died and came back to life, like Lazarus.” But more commonly I hear, “How could God let this happen?” “God is not present.” But even then—especially then—God is fully present in the wound. My job as chaplain is mostly to hold that knowledge as I sit and talk and hear and believe their wounds. Nurses and doctors are the ones who touch the most, and mostly I don’t know anything about their faith or non-faith (or whatever), but regardless, Jesus is present in those wounds, and my job is to stand by and hold that knowledge and witness this sacrament of hands and wounds. Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side.

Before chaplaincy and the hospital, there was Uptown. There, the wounds were visible—exposed, almost ordinary: pockmarked faces, scabs, missing teeth. Everyone bore the marks of the street. And yet they held one another close—resting heads on shoulders, sometimes fighting, sometimes kissing—like the precious people of God they are.

Tom, with the tattoo, was among them—Doubting Thomas in jeans and a well-worn T-shirt. He was known to complain: the coffee was lousy, the toilet clogged, the clothing closet growing sparse. We at Uptown, he insisted, were cutting corners, sweeping things under the rug. We weren’t living up to our promise. What he meant was this: there is a kind of faith that speaks too quickly, that says “peace” before the wound has truly been named.

And maybe that’s where we need to end up.

Not with a command to eliminate doubt, but with an invitation to let it lead us somewhere.

So perhaps we might hear Jesus’ words – his benediction – in a new way:

Blessed are those who have not seen—and yet have come close enough to touch.
Blessed are those who have not seen, but who have touched, and come to believe.
Blessed are those who have touched.

Not those who have mastered their doubts, or banished them, or argued them into submission—but those who have let their doubt drive them closer, closer even to the wounds. Blessed are those who have not stood at a safe distance, constructing a faith made only of ideas, but who have risked contact—with what is broken, what is suffering, what is unresolved.

Because the truth is, most of us will not be granted the kind of sight the disciples received in that locked room. We will not see the risen Christ standing before us, breathing peace into the air. But we are given something else—something no less real, and perhaps more demanding. We are given the wounds.

And the question is not whether we will have doubts. We will. The question is whether, in the midst of those doubts, we will draw near or turn away. Whether we will harden ourselves against the pain of the world—or allow ourselves to be interrupted by it, undone by it, brought into contact with it.

To touch the wounds of Christ today is to sit at the bedside when there are no answers. It is to listen when someone names their grief without trying to fix it. It is to refuse the easy language that skips too quickly to resurrection, and instead remain—present, attentive—at the site of suffering. It is to risk being changed by what we encounter there.

And if we do that—if we dare to touch—then something happens. Not all at once, not always with clarity or certainty. But slowly, quietly, the absence we fear begins to give way to presence. The void we dread is revealed to be, somehow, already inhabited. Christ is there.

Not beyond the wound, but within it.

This is the gift Thomas gives the Church. Not doubt as an endpoint, but doubt as a pathway—one that leads, if we are willing, into the very heart of God. A God who does not remain untouched by suffering, but who bears it, keeps it, and offers it to us as the place of encounter.

“My Lord and my God,” Thomas says—not after seeing from a distance, but after coming close enough to know.

So maybe the two Thomases are not so far apart after all. The one who crouches in isolation, wrapped in doubt, and the one who reaches out in trembling faith—they are the same person, at different moments on the same path. And we are that person too.

We know what it is to curl in on ourselves, to feel the weight of doubt pressing in. But we are also invited—again and again—to unfold, to extend a hand, to move toward the wound rather than away from it.

Blessed are those who have touched.

Blessed are those who, in a wounded world, do not turn away.

Blessed are those who find, in the very place they feared most, the living Christ waiting to be known.