A while ago, an image made the rounds on my social media. It’s a reimagining of Caravaggio’s “The Incredulity of Saint Thomas,” in which Thomas is probing Jesus’s scars after his resurrection. In this photo by Elizabeth Ohlson Wallin, scars are still being probed, but they’re not the scars you traditionally associate with the crucifixion. They’re top surgery scars, instead.

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It made me deeply uncomfortable. For as long as I can remember, I have policed all the borders of my body, the ways I dressed and walked and spoke, lest something out me and it become apparent to others what I knew was true. It is hard to unlearn that kind of shame, and every change that transition brought provoked a two-fold reaction in me: happiness, as my selves began to align, and fear, of those changes becoming visible to others. So to see a reimagined Jesus openly displaying those scars, and not just that, but Thomas poking at them? That made me want to hide in the deepest, darkest hole I could find.

At the end of January, I had a pre-op appointment for top surgery. Through an unfortunate fluke in scheduling, it was in the middle of a three-day ministry fellowship gathering. And so I spent the morning thinking about contextualizing the gospel in different cultural, racial, and socio-economic spaces, and then after lunch left our group to walk a mile through San Francisco to reach the private clinic where my appointment was. Easy, I thought, this will be quick and then I’ll rejoin the group at Grace Cathedral for the ministry conference.

I’m not sure why I thought this would be quick or easy. Top surgery isn’t minor surgery, but I kept feeling it was because I was mentally comparing it to last year’s surgery. That kept me in bed for months in excruciating pain, and housebound for a lot longer. It wasn’t until the six month mark that I felt better and could somewhat pick my life back up. In comparison, this had to be easy. Had to.

But then I got to the appointment, and was given the consent forms to sign. And it hit me that maybe this actually was a big thing I was doing. I signed page after page to signify that yes, I knew this surgery was irreversible, yes, I knew this would make breastfeeding impossible, yes, I knew there were no guaranteed outcomes, yes, I knew something could go wrong, yes I knew I knew I knew. The medical assistants came in to go over post-op instructions with me, from when the dressings come off to when you can lift heavy things again and how you’re not supposed to lift your arms above your shoulders for six months. Had I made any travel plans in the next six months, they asked, offering to write me a letter for TSA that would outline my medical restrictions. They took photos and went over my health history. I saw the doctor, who told me he has done at least 1400 of these surgeries, and did I have any questions? There’s an animated video on my website, he said, that will tell you exactly how your surgery will go if you’re wondering about the technique. Oh, and can we have your credit card so you can pay the $6500 surgeon’s fee? My head was spinning with all the info and it was at that point that I knew I should’ve brought someone with me. 

And then. And then they cheerfully told me that they had something for me. A robe, for after surgery, when getting anything on over my head would be hard. It had the name of the clinic embroidered on it, and it came in a tote bag that was almost discreet but not really. And all I could think was, I have to go to a ministry conference at Grace Cathedral. I can’t go to a f—— ministry conference at the f—— cathedral with a robe in a tote bag that screams “gender confirmation surgery.” But I said thank you, took the robe, stuffed it in my messenger bag where it wouldn’t really fit, handed them my credit card, and left the clinic. And then I made my way to the cathedral, because what else was I supposed to do?

I walked up Taylor Street, my bag bouncing against my back with every step, the robe inside, quietly freaking out, and wondering if I should just forget about the conference and go home. In Barbara Brown Taylor’s book Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others, she reminds readers of the charge of Deuteronomy in the Hebrew Bible, that is, to be kind to strangers. All kinds of “problematic present-day strangers,” she says: “the religious stranger, the cultural stranger, the transgendered stranger, and the homeless stranger.” And at that point I threw the book across the room, because I am not a stranger at church. I belong at church. I am a transgender Christian and there is no tension nor contradiction in that phrase.

And yet. Walking into the church while processing that appointment I’d just had made me feel like the details of transitioning–the details of my life–were at odds with a building like the cathedral and the kind of people who are at a cathedral. Like I could be there as long as I didn’t bring any of the messiness of my life in with me and could pretend I was just like everyone else there. It’s okay to be trans, the spires of the cathedral seemed to tell me, it’s okay to be queer, as long as you don’t push the limits of cis-heteronormativity too much. Cathedrals are stately spaces, built on power and control, built on heterosexuality and colonialism, built on whiteness, built on a world in which people like me don’t openly exist. It was in such marked contrast to the clinic, which wasn’t just trans friendly but was actually designed for trans people. It is one of the few spaces in my life where I am completely normal–or at least the norm. Maybe that was where I belonged, tucked out of sight on the tenth floor of a building on Sutter Street. Not in a cathedral, not in a monumental church on the top of a hill, not in a space meant to be seen. 

It’s not a fair assessment, not for Grace Cathedral that, while monumental, also hosts an AIDS memorial chapel and regularly worships underneath memorial quilts. If there’s one cathedral that doesn’t automatically put non-straight, non-cisgender people in the ‘stranger’ category, it’s Grace. I know this. I have experienced this myself. Yet as I walked into that vaulted sanctuary, all I could see were the echoes of the kind of power that kept me in the closet so long. The church isn’t where I learned there was something wrong with me–I had learned to be ashamed of who and what I was when I was very young, long before I stepped foot in a church. But the church at large told me I was right to fear that I was inherently unlovable. The church at large taught me that it has the power to name, to categorize, and to bless—and that the power to bless is really the power to condemn.

I was about to turn around and leave, hoping no one had seen me arrive, when I thought of that image again. And I felt myself calm a little, felt some of the ground come back underneath my feet. I’m not sure why that image comforted me then when earlier it had made me so uncomfortable. But I think I felt some peace because in that moment, I saw that both images were telling me something similar. They were showing me how Jesus’s scars were not erased by the resurrection. The crucified and resurrected Lord kept his scars and the evidence of what had been done to him.

I wonder sometimes if the disciples wouldn’t really have preferred a cleaner resurrection, one that erased the trauma, pain, and betrayal of that week, and an unblemished body to go along with it. But that’s not what they got. They got a Savior who carried visible proof of the messiness of the incarnation on his body, and who gently bore that particular testimony to Thomas when he asked, and bears it to us still.

The merging of those two images told me that the cathedral may be stately and ordered, but the Incarnate One was not. Jesus didn’t denigrate the messiness of humanity; from his birth to his death and even after, he leaned into it. And maybe that meant I didn’t have to be ashamed if my particular way of being embodied in this world is messier than most. Not even in a cathedral. In fact, maybe even especially in a cathedral. Because if Jesus belonged at Grace Cathedral, maybe I could too.