The Relationship between Incarnation and Parish

For Jesus to incarnate, he had to choose a parish. A place to be invested, to spend his days. To laugh and play and work and rest. To have meals and meet neighbors and trim the bushes.

For us to incarnate, to express the divine in a human place, we must choose a parish. Parish is where your relationships are. Many of us cannot incarnate because we live our lives too spread thin to be fully present. We cannot incarnate because we have not taken the time to define our parish, or we live in a digital parish, or because we haven’t seen our parish as a parish. Where we are is no accident, unless we treat it as such.

Something I want to be true of incarnation is that we embrace the model of parish in a modern sense. We may not all live within walking distance of each other, but we can embrace a Godspeed way of being–a slowness; an intentionality from which we can walk our parish and see what God is up to. We can attune ourselves to God’s prevenient activity. We can search for ways to participate. We can cultivate belonging. We can apprentice ourselves to Jesus in these places.

The question for us is both where is our parish–what are the relationships we’re cultivating, and where do our parishes overlap with the places God is calling us to be Christ for the world?