Expanding Our Language and Imagination for God by iyree jarrett
A few Sundays ago, our new friend iyree jarrett (she/her) gifted us with a reading of her poem, “when jesus was a Black woman.” Today she’s sharing that poem with us again, along with a longer reflection about expanding our language and imagination for God. We hope you allow God to speak to you as God wills while you read.
when jesus was a Black woman
by iyree jarrett
when jesus was a Black woman
she was born where nothing good was supposed to come from
nazareth and the deep south whispering
that holiness does not grow here
she knew the ritual of public violence—
how crowds justify cruelty,
how silence pretends innocence,
how eyes turn from the marginalized.
when jesus was a Black woman
she said let the children come
because she knew what it meant
to be told you are too young to be heard,
too small and dark to be believed.
she gathered them like she gathered herself—
with gentleness that refused erasure.
her body learned early
how to read danger in a room—
curly mane of hair
that folks tried to tame, touch, theology away,
a body politicized before it ever spoke,
a body that learned
presence alone can be protest,
a body that was a political refugee,
an immigrant fleeing a genocide.
when jesus was a Black woman
she bled out month by month before her crucifixion.
the shedding lining of her uterus
prevented her place in the temple,
they would never let a twelve year old girl read the torah
when jesus was a Black woman
she was lynched on a tree
some insisting it was different
the wounds insisting otherwise.
when jesus was a Black woman
she was a victim of assault,
roman guards gambled for her clothes,
stripped her in the courtyard
before lashes broke her flesh.
she knew what it meant
to be publicly punished
for privately threatening power
her love was not abstract
her love was not detached in the clouds
it cooked, it braided, it washed feet, it waited
it hummed under injustice
jesus might have been a grandmother
when jesus was a Black woman
she was called a witch for her miracles,
for cooking cornbread on the sabbath,
and forgetting to retwist her locs.
she listened with her whole body—
hands that knew
the language of touch,
the difference between fixing and holding,
and weeping over platitudes.
she knew heartbreak and holiness
could exist in the same breath.
knew how grief can be a prayer
and survival a sacrament
her life was interruptible.
she let herself be stopped
by bleeding women,
by crying mothers,
by her own exhaustion—
she slept
she rested
she knew
that divinity is never too busy
to notice her body and sit with it.
when jesus was a Black woman
she remembered all that her ancestors had endured.
in her bones was a
salvation looked like grace,
survival without surrender,
a body still standing,
a spirit that refused to be colonized.
love passed hand to hand
until it learned how to heal.
when jesus was a Black woman
resurrection was not a spectacle.
it was waking up again
after the world tried to end you,
it was joy with scars,
laughter that remembers,
a faith that does not deny the wound,
a faith that invites hands to touch
the reality of her Black body.
Expanding Our Language and Imagination for God
By iyree jarrett
There’s a quiet kind of bondage that can exist in faith that tells us there is only one right way to speak to God, one right image to hold, one right tone, one right posture, and one right name. Over time, without even realizing it, that narrowness can begin to shape not just how we think about God, but also how we see ourselves, and how we see one another.
As we enter the third week of the Blessed are the Question Askers series, I find myself returning again and again to the expansiveness of God. I sit with both the liberating and new feelings in my body when I am told: you are free to imagine, to speak, to relate to God in more than one way.
This reflection begins with that tension: not trying to convince anyone to abandon the language they love—Father, Lord, King—but to widen the table. To say that the God who is infinite cannot be contained by a single metaphor, and that clinging too tightly to one image may say more about our comfort than about God’s fullness.
Scripture itself gives us this permission.
Throughout Scripture, God is described in ways that go beyond one gendered image. God is called Father, yes. But God is also described like a mother in labor, like a woman searching for a lost coin, like a mother gathering her children close. God is portrayed as a mother eagle hovering over her young, as a mother bear fierce in protection, as a midwife bringing life into the world, and as a woman patiently working yeast through dough. Scripture also gives us images that move beyond gender entirely. God is called rock, light, fire, and living water. God is shepherd, creator, judge, and sustainer. Even the Spirit, moving over the waters in Genesis, carries a richness that resists being confined to one category.
Yes, much of the language is masculine, written in patriarchal cultures, by men, in gendered languages, but even within that, there are interruptions and glimpses of something more expansive.
Taken together, these images remind us that no single metaphor is meant to define God completely. Some speak to God’s relationality while others note God’s care or authority. Each one reveals something true, but none of them contain the whole. When we understand this, the questions become: Which metaphors are we allowing ourselves to use? And how does that shape what we perceive?
For example, if we only ever imagine God as male, we may begin, subtly, unconsciously, to associate maleness with divinity, closest to God, with everything else a step removed. This is what theologian Mary Daly was getting at when she said, “If God is male, then male is God.” Not because God actually is male, but because our imagination starts to behave that way.
Even Jesus, who came in a male body, consistently disrupted rigid gender expectations of his time. He nurtured, wept, cooked, touched, allowed himself to be interrupted, and so on. Even in choosing a particular body, God refused to be reduced to it, showing that perhaps the incarnation was not meant to confine God to masculinity, but to reveal a God who transcends it. So then, what do we do with that?
I think the answer is that we might return to the freedom of thoughtful, intentional expansion. What happens if I pray to God as Mother? What happens if I use “they/them” pronouns for God? What if I allow God to exceed our categories?
What if I see God as truly genderful? A God who contains all expressions, reflections, and possibilities. A God in whose image humanity was created, male and female, yes, but also everything in between, beyond, and outside those binaries, not just night and day, as Brenna shared with us, but also sunset, sunrise, twilight, dawn, and dusk. A God who is not limited to one way of being, but who holds all ways of being. A God who is God.
With this perspective, the implications deepen. If God is genderful, then every body becomes a revelation, every person becomes a window, and every identity becomes a site where the divine can be encountered. This is not just about how we talk about God, but about how we see each other. It’s about whether we can look at someone—someone different from us, someone marginalized, someone overlooked—and say: I see the image of God in you.
For some of us, that might be the most important part of this expansion, because there are people who have been told, directly or indirectly, that they do not reflect God as fully as others do due to various aspects of their identities. Instead, this perspective says: You are not an afterthought in the image of God. You are not a deviation from the divine or a lesser reflection, but a bearer of the Imago Dei.
So what does it do to our understanding of God if we imagine Jesus as a Black woman, even with the full historical knowledge that Jesus was a brown, first century Palestinian man living in Judea?
When Jesus is imagined as a Black woman, as Dr. Christena Cleveland invites us to consider, we are confronted with a Christ who knows what it means to be dismissed, to be endangered, to be misunderstood, and still to love. We are invited to see that holiness does not live only in places of comfort or power, but in places that the world has written off. It expands our imagination in a way that theology alone sometimes cannot. It moves us from concept to embodiment. It reminds us that incarnation means God meets us in real bodies, in real histories, in real struggles. It suggests that the way we imagine God shapes the way we see people, and if we can imagine Jesus in a body that has experienced marginalization, then we may begin to recognize the presence of God in those same experiences today. If we can imagine Jesus in a body that has been overlooked or dismissed, then we may begin to treat those bodies with greater dignity and care.
The deeper invitation is not just to think differently about God, but to see differently: to see the image of God in places we were not taught to look, to recognize that no single image can hold the fullness of who God is, and to remain open to a God who is always bigger than our language, always beyond our categories, and always closer than we imagined. In this way, expanding our language for God is not just a theological exercise. It is an act of justice and healing. It is a way of saying: the image of God is bigger than what we were handed.