I began to understand why so many people chose to be “born-again” and follow strict rules that would tell them what to do, once and for all. It was tempting to rely on a formula – “accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and savior,” for example – that became itself a form of idolatry and kept you from experiencing God in your flesh, in the complicated flesh of others. It was tempting to proclaim yourself “saved” and go back to sleep.

This was where I found my faith: a faith expressed in the wild conceit that a helpless, low-caste baby could be God. That ugly, contaminated, and unimportant people embodied holiness. That my own neediness and misfitting, not my goodness or piety, were what God intended to use.

What happened once I started distributing communion was the truly disturbing, dreadful realization about Christianity: You can’t be a Christian by yourself.

Charity had always slightly creeped me out: There was nothing quite as condescending as the phrase “helping the less fortunate” rolling off the tongue of a white professional, as if poverty were a matter of luck instead of the result of a political system.

Imperialism and exploitation,” he wrote, “spheres of influence, trade barriers, unequal distribution of the world’s goods, starvation in the midst of plenty, slums with gold coasts next door, poverty supporting luxury: These are marks of an unChristian world.

Conversion was turning out to be quite far from the greeting-card moment promised by televangelists, when Jesus steps into your life, personally saves you, and becomes your lucky charm forever. Instead, it was socially and politically awkward, as well as profoundly confusing. I wasn’t struck with any sudden conviction that I now understood the “truth.” If anything, I was just crabbier, lonelier, and more destabilized.

While the classic conversion story involves desperation, hitting bottom, and a plea for help, I think now that it was gratitude, as well as the suffering I’d seen, that made room for me to open my heart to something new.

In big ways and small, I knew exactly how selfish a war could make me, and I saw all around me how fear and need drove other people to terrible betrayals. Yet over and over, I also saw how war created a community, a people, and how that community was nourished by gestures of sharing. It was sharing that didn’t depend on personal intimacy, and a community that didn’t depend on everyone’s being friends; it foreshadowed what I would come to understand as church, at its best.

Imperialism and exploitation,” he wrote, “spheres of influence, trade barriers, unequal distribution of the world's goods, starvation in the midst of plenty, slums with gold coasts next door, poverty supporting luxury: These are marks of an unChristian world.

I was, as the prophet said, hungering and thirsting for righteousness. I found it at the eternal and material core of Christianity: body, blood, bread, wine, poured out freely, shared by all.