Jesus: Undercover Boss or God with Us? (Anne Blackwill)- Holy Week and the Passion

Summary

Podcast Summary
New Books Network – Almost Good Catholics:
Episode: "Jesus: Undercover Boss or God With Us?" (Anne Blackwell on Holy Week and the Passion)
Release Date: April 5, 2026
Host: Chris Odiniecz | Guest: Anne Blackwell

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Overview

This special Holy Week episode features a profound, far-reaching conversation between host Chris Odiniecz and Anne Blackwell—a literature professor with decades of teaching experience and a lifetime of Christian reflection—about the central mysteries of Christianity: the humanity and divinity of Jesus, the nature of the Trinity, the role of suffering and law, and the meaning of salvation. Their dialogue mixes personal stories, literary allusions, and deep theological exploration, culminating in memorable moments and insights particularly relevant to Holy Week.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Nature of God and Relationship with Humans

• God Desires Intimacy: Anne emphasizes God’s desire for personal relationship with each person—not just the great or famous—reflecting genuine, living communication (02:45, 74:05).
  • Quote, Anne: "How could the God of all glory ... actually want to be in communication with each of these human beings? And not just the famous ... it's not just the great." (02:45)
• Jesus as the Bridge: She articulates her core conviction that Jesus, in the Incarnation, “spilled the gap” between God and humanity (11:32-11:38).
  • Quote, Anne: “There’s this unbridgeable gap between who God is and who we are ... Jesus spilled that gap with himself. And that was, that's for me, the Incarnation.” (11:32)

2. Scripture, Language, and Theological Reflection

• Scriptural Foundation: Anne’s theology is rooted in long engagement with Scripture, memorizing and journaling since childhood (07:32, 67:07).
  • Quote, Anne: "For me, Scripture is a map ... it was very Protestant before ... my friends were not encouraged to read Scripture." (07:32)
• Language’s Limits and Power: The discussion explores the challenge and importance of language in faith, including the danger of limiting God with labels and the need for stretching language beyond clichés (24:03-24:31, 42:10).
  • Quote, Anne: “The labels are so dangerous as our dichotomies that cut things into two ... it's a lifetime of worship. What we can't fully comprehend ever. But we can comprehend partly.” (24:11, 24:31)

3. The Trinity: Unity, Mystery, and Relationality

• Three Persons, Deep Unity: The episode explores classical and personal metaphors for the Trinity, acknowledging its mystery but also its centrality for Christian worship (14:51-15:15, 16:34).
  • Quote, Anne: “I think it's the heart of worship. But I think it's pretty clear that they're three persons. So the shamrock doesn't quite work ... I value thinking about it as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” (15:15, 16:34)
• Liturgical Experience: They discuss how the experience of the Trinity in worship—especially through liturgy or shared prayer—is formative and expansive (16:33-16:34).

4. Humanity, Sin, and the Law

• Not Inherently Sinful: Chris reflects on whether being “fully human” requires sin, ultimately amending his stance: “the son of man ... can be 100% human without sin, as is his mother ... the less we sin, the more we become ourselves” (03:57).
• The Law as Teacher: The Old Testament Law is viewed as a “schoolteacher”—helpful but never intended to save (29:44).
  • Quote, Anne: “You can't skip the law ... Even this book ... I'm worried about a little bit ... worship is dependent on the love of love, of obedience” (30:48-31:04).

5. Gospel of John and the Oneness of Jesus and the Father

• Christ’s Identity: Anne highlights John’s Gospel, where Jesus refers to God as Father 40 times in chapters 5–12 and again in 14–17, underscoring his oneness with the Father (09:38).

6. Suffering, Death, and the Passion

• Jesus’ Suffering: The conversation enters deeply into Jesus’ agony in Gethsemane and on the cross as real, necessary, and revealing both his humanity and his cosmic role (32:13-36:01).
  • Quote, Anne: “I think I have stepped in to what Jesus was experiencing ... I don't think that realization that he was the beloved Son of God ever left him.” (32:13)
• Why Jesus Had to Die: Anne explores multiple theological layers—substitution, solidarity with suffering, cosmic transformation—using stories from Scripture and literary images (43:53-44:35).
  • Quote: “When as soon as God as son enters into our death ... death changes because he has within him the power of life ... where God is, there is life.” (43:53)

7. Universal Scope of Christ’s Redemption

• Universal Invitation: 1 Timothy’s “Savior of all, especially those who believe” prompts a conversation about hope for all humanity, and the possibility of a universal embrace (38:56-39:16).
  • Quote, Anne: “...we trust in the living God, who's the savior of all men, especially of the. Because the ones who believe can draw near.” (39:01)

8. Experiencing God: Relationship Over Concept

• Incarnation as Experience: The necessity of the Incarnation is not to make God understandable as a concept, but to make relationship and experience possible (83:26-83:46).
  • Quote, Anne: “He took on flesh so he could deal with all this. Nobody else could be both God and man ... it's experiencing it.” (83:26, 83:41)
• "Lifing" Us: Anne’s friend’s prayer—asking God to “life” someone as a verb—captures this active, relational theology (12:30, 83:48).

9. Living Faith in Community

• Corporate Worship: Joy and growth arise in shared worship, study, small groups, prayer, and service (75:43-77:01).
• Faith Expressed in Action: Examples include teaching in prisons, caring for the vulnerable, and attending to suffering as Christ does (53:17, 78:01).

10. Mystery, Hope, and the Book-in-Progress

• Mysteries Remain: Despite probing intellect and rich experience, Anne and Chris repeatedly affirm the ultimate mystery of God, Christ, the Trinity, and the afterlife (47:01, 82:58).
  • Quote, Chris: “It's wonderful and very, very mysterious.” (82:58)
• Title of the Book: Working title: “God With Us—Emmanuel.” More recently: “God Within Us,” reflecting the movement from incarnation to indwelling (78:40–78:49).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Trinity and identity:

  • "The Father and I are one. If you've known me, you've known the Father … it's so crucial to knowing not only who Jesus is, but who God is." – Anne Blackwell (09:38)

• On naming and reality:

  • "If you name it, then it is a thing. If you cannot name it, it's remains ineffable." – Chris Odiniecz (23:48)

• On Jesus' suffering in Gethsemane:

  • "He comes out and says, my soul is grieving to the point of death ... falls down on the ground on his face and starts pleading with God." – Anne Blackwell (32:41)

• On the power of law and justice:

  • "The law was our school teacher. It wasn't meant to save us ... it can't give you eternal life." – Anne Blackwell (29:44)

• On Christian community and loving others:

  • "I've recognized ... I have to love everybody who claims to be a Christian. I don't have options. That was Jesus's dying wish." – Anne Blackwell (77:12)

• On God’s presence and transformation:

  • "He is lifing us. He carries us when we can’t walk. He breathes life into us ... at this point it’s not just so I will understand things or I’ll feel better ... it’s that we can be part of the kingdom work." – Anne Blackwell (83:48)

• On understanding and experiencing God:

  • "It's not understanding, it's experiencing it." – Anne Blackwell (83:41)

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Timestamps for Significant Segments

• [02:45] – Opening reflection on God's relationship with humanity
• [09:38] – The Gospel of John and Jesus’ identity
• [15:15] – The Trinity's central mystery
• [24:03] – The limitations and risks of theological language
• [29:44] – The function of the Law and human nature
• [32:13] – The emotional and spiritual agony of Jesus in Gethsemane
• [38:56] – 1 Timothy and the scope of salvation (“Savior of all”)
• [43:53] – Why Jesus had to die; Christ’s death transforming death itself
• [75:43] – The power and importance of communal worship
• [78:40] – Discussion of the working title and purpose of Anne’s book
• [83:26] – The incarnation as God entering embodied experience for relationship

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Tone and Style

The conversation is intimate, thoughtful, and deeply reverent. Both speakers are candid about the limits of their understanding, emphasizing worship, lived experience, and scriptural engagement over doctrinal finality. Literary, philosophical, and everyday references create an engaging, accessible tone that invites listeners into contemplation rather than debate.

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Conclusion

This episode offers an honest, expansive meditation on Jesus’ identity: not a mere “undercover boss” or distant deity, but "God with us," suffering, loving, and transforming humanity from within. Through shared narratives, close reading of Scripture, and heartfelt questioning, Anne Blackwell and Chris Odiniecz demonstrate how faith, doubt, and joy coexist at the heart of Christian tradition—especially poignant for Holy Week.

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Relevant for: Seekers, Christians across traditions, students of theology, and anyone who wonders what the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of Jesus mean for real life and for the world.

Transcript

[Chris Odiniecz]

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[Anne Blackwell]

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[Chris Odiniecz]

Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection infection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions including als, Lou Gehrig's disease, Myasthenia gravis or Lambert Eaton syndrome, and medications including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait?

[Anne Blackwell]

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[Chris Odiniecz]

Hey NBN listeners, We're running our 2026 New Books Network Audience Survey and we'd love just a few minutes of your time. NBN has been bringing you in depth conversations with authors and scholars for over 15 years. We haven't done a comprehensive audience survey since 2022, and a lot has changed since then. It's time to hear from you again. Here's why we're asking. We want to understand who's listening, what subjects and podcasts you love most, and where you'd like to see us grow. Your responses help us tell NBN's story to the publishers, libraries and institutions we partner with. When we can show that our listeners are serious readers, lifelong learners, and heavy library users, it opens doors to new partnerships, better resources, and ultimately a stronger NBN for everyone. And one more thing, if you leave your email address at the end of the survey. You'll be entered to win a $100 gift card to bookshop.org, a chance to stock up on books while supporting independent bookstores at the same time. The survey takes just five minutes. Your answers are confidential and your email will never be shared. Head to newbooksnetwork.com to take the survey today. We really appreciate your support. Now go take the survey.

[Anne Blackwell]

Welcome to the new books network. I want the relationship I want to be there in. I mean, that's phenomenal. How could the God of all glory, of all power, of all reality so far beyond us actually want to be in communication with each of these human beings? And it's not just the famous, it's not this, the great.

[Chris Odiniecz]

It's the episode of Undercover Boss. If you've seen that, I love that he's the Undercover Boss. He just wants to see what it's like.

[Anne Blackwell]

It's not what he's doing and he's not checking up and how faithful they are. He knows. He knows. No, he cares about being connected with us. Being actually to share the oneness that they have with each other is a relational thing, which is his core person

[Chris Odiniecz]

characteristic as God Triune. Here's the episode I recorded two days ago with my mother in law, Ann Blackwill, who is a wise and wonderful woman who prays constantly, who is a literature professor with decades of teaching experience and who's been writing a book for the last 20 years about the mystery of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Two comments on this conversation. First, we recorded it on Saturday morning, March 28, 2026, Lazarus Saturday, the day before Palm Sunday. And a few hours later after this recording, we went to Mass, the Saturday anticipatory Mass for Palm Sunday with my family. And the following evening I went to another Palm Sunday mass with one of my kids who missed the Saturday one. And it was amazing and wonderful how many of the things that Ann and I talked over in this recording that you're about to hear we heard again at Mass a few hours later. I would call that a holy coincidence, and I love it when that happens. Second, in this conversation I said something kind of heretical and I wondered if a sinless Christ could be fully human. Now that I've thought about those comments for a couple of days, I think that sin is actually not part of our humanity, but the harmful addition to it that we acquired in the fall. So I don't think it's inherently human to be sinful. Now a couple Days later, I would say that the son of man, Ben Adam can be 100% human without sin, as is his mother. And in fact, haven't we all found that the less we sin, the more we become ourselves? Exercising those mind controlling parasites one by one, pulling thorns out of our flesh. So when you hear me talking about that, think of this amendment and bear my foolishness with charity. And so, without further ado, my discussion with Anne Blackwell on Almost Good Catholics. Anne Blackwill is a literature professor who has taught all over the world. At the Naval Academy in Annapolis, the Beirut College for Women in Lebanon, the University of Utah. In a part time capacity, she's taught at Catholic University in Washington D.C. at Tel Aviv University, Gordon College in Massachusetts, the Hellenic College in Boston, which is a Greek Orthodox school, and in the Boston University prison program. All told, she's taught literature in prisons for more than 20 years. She's also taught philosophy classes to police officers through the American University in Washington D.C. so, interesting lady, very dear to me. And today I'm proud to share our discussion on Almost Good Catholics. Good morning and welcome to Almost Good Catholics, a podcast about theology and apologetics. I'm your host, Chris Odiniecz, and I get to talk to interesting people about interesting things today. My guest is Anne Blackwell. Since I've known you, you've been working on a book. Yes, and my joke is from a French poet who said that a poem is never complete, it's only abandoned. And I've been told that about a dissertation, it's never finished, it's only abandoned. So I'm wondering when you'll abandon this book.

[Anne Blackwell]

I shall never abandon this book. But I may not outlive the production of it.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah, I read an early version of it over a decade ago in a blue folder.

[Anne Blackwell]

I'd forgotten. Yeah, yeah. Well, there have been versions, multiple versions. This started in 1986. I'm apologizing. Canada seemed different. You know, it was after my dissertation, after I was thinking about Virginia Woolf and phenomenology, but that was not the point. The point was I'd read a book on Bad English Fellow. I noticed his book was in Amazon yesterday. Not the one that I read John Stott, who was writing about the crucifixion and he left out the Resurrection. I said, what the what? How can you do that? You know? And so that was what prompted me initially to write. But then I wanted to start with all the aspects of faith. This is in a way, a book on theology. But I've never much read theology books. I Mostly read Scripture. And so it's an accumulation of decades of worshiping God and often through Scripture, starting as a 9 year old memorizing scripture, 9 and 10 and 11 year old. So for me, Scripture is a map. And I know that seems very Protestant. And it was very Protestant before, what was it, the Pope, John the 23rd, and then friends of mine who were Catholic and were reading Scripture, we were on the same page. It was before that when the Mass was knocked on the vernacular and my friends were not encouraged to read Scripture, particularly young friends in grade school and high school.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah, I think that's a big change where the Catholics have sort of veered toward what Protestantism used to be reading Scripture and knowing it. And the joke is that Catholics know their Scripture, but Protestants know the address. They can tell you, they can tell you what book, what chapter. And Catholics are like, oh wait, I think it's somewhere in John, but I'm not sure.

[Anne Blackwell]

And it's really interesting because in this last couple of years, the Gospel John has become huge for me because it, much more than the Synoptics, really reveals the identity of Christ from Christ's point of view. And he's talking a lot about who he is in relationship to the Father, which I just don't see as much in the Synoptics at all. And when I started looking at it closely, I noticed that in chapters five to 12 during his ministry, and some of that was argumentation with arguments, strong arguments with Pharisees and some of the other leaders, he called God the Father or my father 40 times in those five or six, seven chapters. And then at the end of the book when he's talking with his disciples in chapters 14, right after the last supper, chapters 14 through 17, again, he calls God the Father or my Father 40 times. Huge part of his identity. And he says the Father and I are one. If you've known me, you've known the Father. Just all of this that is so crucial to knowing not only who Jesus is, but who God is. When I was at your Mass once recently, the priest said, the Trinity is always mystery.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah.

[Anne Blackwell]

It's always partly mystery because it's talking about the very identity of who God is. And it's beyond us. We're so finite and we're so fault ridden that there's this unbridgeable gap between who God is and who we are.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah.

[Anne Blackwell]

And my feeling is that Jesus spilled that gap with himself.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah.

[Anne Blackwell]

And that was, that's for me, the Incarnation. So at the back of some of these things, we're talking about. There are these theological ideas, but what counts for me is the preeminence, the reality, the holding up, the worshiping, the adoring of who God actually is and who Jesus actually is and how they with the Holy Spirit are linked together. It's really interesting because my dear friend Joanna, who is a strength in our tiny little church and when Sarah first got ill, I turned to her for prayer and she really prayed that Sarah would be lifed by God. Using life as a verb.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Uh huh.

[Anne Blackwell]

Not a noun. And that guides a lot of my worship. Not that I will get certain things or achieve certain things, but that I'll be in such keen relationship with the one who is life, both God and Jesus. Because John talks about in his letter, talks about Jesus's life itself. And I think that's huge. So basically what I was hoping to do was to have a faith, the capacity to think and even talk about faith in a way that makes God larger than man. My experience with some Protestant churches and this reading that we just did of Baldwin's Go tell it on Go tell on the mountain is man dominates.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah.

[Anne Blackwell]

And sin dominates. And if you start with sin, you're liable to end with some form of the law and it becomes a legalistic experience rather than a glorious experience of the living God. Right.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Well, three things I want to say. One is, I completely agree with you if you start to think oh I'm good enough, but you're not good enough. That's a very human, like you did this wrong. But at least I'm not like this. And I think that it plagues all religious people of every stripe. Second, the Trinity for me is something I don't understand at all. But we try to put it into words. And I remember one day we were reading a children's book at the kids preschool and it was about St. Patrick's Day. And it was ridiculous because it was like St Patrick went to Ireland, St Patrick this and this. And then the last page said and St. Patrick talked about clovers. And I thought like this is not what same for this. So it's not, it's, that's not it. So that's how you like you work in little pagan leprechauns into. Yeah, what, whatever it was. But, but we on one hand we talk about Trinity as, as a, as a shamrock where it's three leaves of one plant. And then like okay, I can understand that sometimes we talk about, we have different roles. Like you can be a teacher and a mother and a sister and a daughter. You're all three all at the same time, but you're still inhabiting.

[Anne Blackwell]

Yeah.

[Chris Odiniecz]

And then the other one is the famous story of St. Augustine, who was sitting on the beach, or, like, walking on the beach, pondering the Trinity, and an angel said, okay, well, dig a hole. And so he dug a hole. He said, okay, now put the ocean in there. And he's like, well, that's easier to do than understanding the Trinity. So perhaps it's futile, but I think maybe even a step toward the right direction is.

[Anne Blackwell]

Well, I don't think it's futile at all. I think it's the heart of worship. But I think it's pretty clear that they're three persons. So the shamrock doesn't quite work. You know, I think it's worth probing and stretching our minds to try to move as close as we can to the greatness of God, understanding that there is. I mean, the names of God, the ancient names, the Hebrew names, have helped me. I don't know. I'm not a Hebrew scholar at all, an Old Testament scholar at all. So I may be getting some of these names wrong. But basically, I see Elohim, the creator God, and Yahweh, the imminent God. So we have. Both of them are God, but one is talking about his transcendence and one. One is talking about his very present Shekinah glory when he appears to man, when he relates with man. And the greatest part of that glory is shown in his sole Christ. So I value thinking about it as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as, I think the liturgy of the Catholic Church.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Absolutely.

[Anne Blackwell]

And my friend Joanna, who I just mentioned, has recently, just a week ago, come away from, with her husband, a silent retreat in a monastery. And because she's very Protestant, she balked a little at first. She went to all these different Masses and all these different meetings during the day, maybe all but one of eight or so. And in each one, there was that Father, Summon Spirit. It was a part of every liturgy. And the liturgy was a little hard for her initially. But she said now that she's left the monastery, that's what's blessing her. And it's because the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are present in every moment of the worship of the liturgy. I have a friend, another friend. I go to Gail, who, when I want prayer, I just shut up and let her pray because she has a strong, strong sense of the goodness of God, the greatness of God. And she always comes in as the context for everything she's praying for. Same thing happens in the song, the Worship song in our little community is led by a couple of people who are good musicians but are not showmen at all. They are just worshiping. That's the height of worship for me in the church service each time more so than the sermon, even more so than the corporate prayer. It's because God is huge and I'm stretching towards him. And it's experiential. It's not just rational. I love the fact that God Jesus told us that the great commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind. There are some branches of worship of people communities, surely Protestant. I'm not sure, Gavin, that just don't want to think. And for me, stretching our minds not to try to control it because we cannot analyze it. We're not going to get there and get there. But if we can, it does stretch our minds to live, to worship, to experience a larger God. When I was teenager, maybe a guy named J.B. phillips came out with a book called you'd God is Too Small. And I'm going to get a copy of that now. I noticed on Amazon there were all these old copies of it. And my God is always too small. I'm not capable. I'm just not capable. But I am capable of are stretching and worshiping and experiencing the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in different moments. And that for me is where I want my theology to rest. Not in the nature of man, because you may not have this in Catholicism, but when I was growing up, I would hear the heart is. It's just one passage. Called it igemia. Again, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Hmm. No, I don't know that one.

[Anne Blackwell]

And.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Or what is that from?

[Anne Blackwell]

It's the Old Testament someplace. Okay. But I don't think it's important to find it. Okay, but what. In fact, I noticed when my friend Joanna went on another retreat on the Holy Spirit because she said, I don't understand the Holy Spirit that much. And so she got me a book by a guy named Tory who published his book in 1907. And he was the beginning. The head of or he started Moody Bible Institute, which is a very conservative religiously. I don't know what's happened to them in the last decades, but his view of man was really low. He didn't even want to acknowledge the humanity of Jesus because for him, mankind was dark. Which was very similar for me to Baldwin's stepfather. There's just the world is terrifying and anathema. Yeah, dark. I don't know how you put that. And there are passages, a lot of passages, against world order. And we can see it in our economic systems, in our political systems. There is something pretty deadly and a lot of that that is anti Jesus, anti God. But the world itself is something that God loves with so profoundly, so infinitely, that Jesus was able to say, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, me.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah.

[Anne Blackwell]

That whosoever, anybody can come and have life.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Right.

[Anne Blackwell]

And that means if you only see the world out there as dark and scary and threatening to your children, you're not seeing the way God sees it.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Do you have any sense of what it would be like to be Jesus and talking about your Father? Because I always sometimes think of God as one. Like, he always knows he's God. He always knows he's the Father. And other times he's like, oh, no, the Father, whatever. The Father sent me. And so there's a distinction that he makes.

[Anne Blackwell]

Well, I think that's the distinction of the persons. Yeah, I think there are two, three persons that it's not just. There is. There's such unity among those persons because there is such. We call it love. We don't have a word that's big enough to capture the word that God felt for his Son and the Son felt for his Father throughout, beyond time, before time, now will be after time. We don't have a big enough sense of time and space. We don't have a big enough sense of what it means to be transcendent. We don't have a big enough sense to know what their relationship was. You fought again and again, said, this is my beloved Son. Listen to him. That was at his baptism. And Jesus said, see, the thing that's exciting to me is maybe I'll just read the very beginning of the Gospel, which is his prologue to the Gospel. And I'm going to read the first three, four verses and then skip to the 14. It says, this is talking about Jesus as the Word. I talked about this with a friend. Somehow, something that I don't know about the ancient Greek that had something to do with the word. Use of the word. Word in the Greek, Logos has something to do with creation and the impetus for all life. And so we call it Word, but it's more than a word. It's like Jesus who says, I've given them my disciples your name and it's your identity.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Right. If you name it, then it is a thing. If you cannot name it, it's remains uneffable.

[Anne Blackwell]

Well, Maybe identity, it's. Here it is here. It is relational. You know, you can inter. You can experience this even if you can't fully comprehend it.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Well, there's also the idea that we can't understand something unless we can put a label on it.

[Anne Blackwell]

That's wrong. I mean, our labeling. I mean. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Please listen.

[Anne Blackwell]

No, I mean, the labels are so dangerous as our dichotomies that cut things into two because it's mechanistic thinking. It's just, okay, I need to control this, so let me stamp it and then it's mine.

[Chris Odiniecz]

But if we don't have a word for it, how do I know we're talking about the same thing?

[Anne Blackwell]

We do have language for it. But to stretch that language so that it's not cliched and it's not theologized and silly, that it's not strictly rational, analytical language. And that's tricky. That's tricky. That's why it's a lifetime of worship. What we can't fully comprehend ever. But we can comprehend partly and talk about partly. We want to do as large a job of that as we possibly can. And that, I think, is experiential. I think we get stretched through the experience of God more than. I always felt like the folks that came to chapel to talk in my Christian school at the end of my college teaching was sort of a sacrificial lamb because he was using his language so much and saying things so much that it was hard. It would take something away. You know, Hemingway say, don't talk too much about the person you love, because the experience is what's important. Yes, it's the dominant thing.

[Chris Odiniecz]

But anyway, I think there are some things that we can sort of understand vaguely, but until we put a label on it, we don't know that it's. This sacrificial lamb is a great example. Yeah. Or scapegoat, which is as old as the book of. Book of Genesis.

[Anne Blackwell]

Right.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Or I was watching a documentary of my students about film, and the argument was that there were no flashbacks in literature until people started cutting and pasting film. And I don't know if that's true, but the idea that we have the word flashback, or we have the idea there's all these words that have appeared with technology that have altered the way we think about it.

[Anne Blackwell]

Right. No, I. Absolutely. I love language, but the multiplicity of words, and then probe those words not for shallow meanings, but for deeper meanings.

[Chris Odiniecz]

All right, so enarchi inologos. Okay. Yeah.

[Anne Blackwell]

In the beginning, which was The Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. And all things were made by him, and without him, nothing was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And then I'll skip to v.14. And the word was made flesh and lived among us, dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah.

[Anne Blackwell]

Isn't that huge?

[Chris Odiniecz]

It's the biggest thing ever.

[Anne Blackwell]

I know. There he is. Identified all creation with life and with the glory of God. Just recently I saw the other. I resaw the other verse I used to hear as a kid all the time, which is Romans 3:23. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And then from that they go from the little black page. This was a wordless book that they said the black page was us for sin. The next page was, I think, red for the blood of Jesus. And then eventually you got to

[Chris Odiniecz]

the

[Anne Blackwell]

white page of purity and the gold plate page of glory of eternity. But here I just saw this was for all have sinned and what comes short of the glory of God. Well, yes. Yes. I never saw that. And so it's that huge gap that exists before men. I know as a child, when people were explaining to me that Jesus paid for my sins. Dip. Because the law demanded it.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah.

[Anne Blackwell]

The ancient Mosaic law demanded it. My mind would go. I was trying to convince my friend, my girlfriend Stevie, that into the kingdom of God is maybe a 10 or 11 year old. And I would hear my mind. It didn't make sense to me. All that made sense was God must love me a lot to give His Son, and Jesus must love me, want to give his life, and I want to be part of that.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Well. And the whole thing sounds. Sounds like God got ensnared by this world that he created. Right. That doesn't make any sense. That God created the whole thing from beginning to end, anticipating everything that would happen. So he.

[Anne Blackwell]

Yeah. And. But yet wanting us not to be enslaved by either his goodness or by

[Chris Odiniecz]

evil, but also setting up the system in such a way that he knew that's exactly what was going to happen.

[Anne Blackwell]

The system. No.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Or our nature at least making us

[Anne Blackwell]

people who have some choice and consequently have a capacity to love and have a capacity to create and have a capacity to be just or unjust. All of these things. That's why who man is is pretty big.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah.

[Anne Blackwell]

You know that Psalm 8 that talks about man under, you know, being made a little lower than the angels created with crowned with glory and honor. You know what I mean? That's not just wickedness. And both Paul and the writer of Hebrews spend a lot of time saying the law was our school teacher. It wasn't meant to save us. Emorett was never supposed to be our savior because he doesn't have life. It can't love you. You can't love it back. You might be able to honor and love it, love it in your life, but it can't give you eternal life. It doesn't have the capacity to draw you to God. And that's what that writer of Hebrews said. A better way came. This came by the Christ who is the image of God. Who is God.

[Chris Odiniecz]

That's so interesting.

[Anne Blackwell]

But as the Son who is like John.

[Chris Odiniecz]

But you can't skip the law. You have to go through it.

[Anne Blackwell]

See, this is the trick. Even this book that I'm writing, I'm worried about a little bit.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah.

[Anne Blackwell]

Because it's. For me, worship is dependent on the love of love, of obedience. The obedience of.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yes.

[Anne Blackwell]

Not the obedience, the ought.

[Chris Odiniecz]

But.

[Anne Blackwell]

Whoa. I want to be this part of. Of God's world. I want to be part of God's people. I want to be part of God's glory. Because I seen it all the time since I was a little kid in Jesus.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah.

[Anne Blackwell]

And Jesus has been that bridge for me that go between that gap, that intercessor, the one that can always speak as man and as God and consequently can draw me into God's presence. And that's what the Hebrews writers say. We needed something that could draw us into his. Into God's presence. And then I'd been working recently, my pastor gave a sermon on Jesus in Gethsemane and I thought, I have never really. It was what you just said a few minutes ago. I've never really thought about what Jesus experienced inside on the cross.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah. I'm very interested in that.

[Anne Blackwell]

And I think I have stepped in to what Jesus was experiencing of himself. I don't think that realization that he was the beloved Son of God ever left him.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah. Do you think that part. Oh, my God. My God, why? Why have you forsaken me? Do you think he's quoting or do you think he's actually saying that from his heart?

[Anne Blackwell]

He's saying both.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Both.

[Anne Blackwell]

He's. Because.

[Chris Odiniecz]

But does he feel forsaken?

[Anne Blackwell]

Yes.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah.

[Anne Blackwell]

I believe he. It was necessary.

[Chris Odiniecz]

It's necessary.

[Anne Blackwell]

I. Zach gave the Shemon on. On. Gethsemane And I needed to work on it more for sure, because it's not just a man dreading death, but he comes out and says, my soul. He's taken the three guys, Peter, James and John with him, as he did in the transfiguration. And so they've heard Jesus, God speak from the clouds, say, this is my beloved son. Listen to him. And they listen to him, and John adores him. Of all the disciples, I think John is probably one of the youngest. And he knows he understands love for his letter. First, John is all about love and his description of Jesus and the things that Jesus says is. And when he's taught, he is all about love. If you love me, he said, and do my words, the Father's going to love you, and we're going to come to you and make our own with you, abide with you. And it's huge sense of community, of actually making a place for us in the presence of God. But I think in Gethsemane, he comes out and says to them, I think John doesn't write about it because I think it was too traumatic for him a few hours before, maybe less than hours before, he's leaning against his beloved Lord in the Last Supper, celebrating when the angel of death passing over all those who had marked their doorpost with the blood of the Lamb. And now Jesus knows he's going to die. He's been telling them that. And he comes out and says, my soul is grieving to the point of death. And then he walks off some way from them and falls down on the ground on his space and starts pleading with God, let this pass from me. And for it seems like hours, he goes back three times. And all the Synoptics too, they say he's praying the same thing, let this cup pass from me. And only one of the Gospels, Luke says there's an angel to come that comforts him and strengthens him. And one of the Gospels, I think it was Mark that says when he comes back the second time, and the disciples have been sleeping and he doesn't wake them, he prays it slightly different. He said, if this cannot pass from me, then I will drink this cup. And I think this time of great agony in that garden, because Luke says that he's in such agony that the sweat is like drops of blood. I mean, it's very intense, even after the angel has come. That's the after that. Yeah. And so God is speaking through that angel and somehow confirming in Jesus that this is an absolute necessity, that if they're if he is going. If they are going to together redeem man. It's necessary.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Well, it also reveals that Jesus really loved being alive. He doesn't have that short timer syndrome. Peace, suckers. I'm out of here. I'm going home. Good luck.

[Anne Blackwell]

No. He loves the world.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah, he loves the world.

[Anne Blackwell]

I was reading. This is just a sidebar, but I was reading a Hopkins poem this morning. Let me see if I can find it. It's about the world. It's called Pied Beauty. And it says, glory be to God for dappled things for skies of couple color as brinded cow for rose molds all in stipple upon trout that swim, fresh fire, coal, chestnut, finch's wings Landscape plotted and pieced, Fold, fallow and plough and all trades their gear and tackle and trim all things counter, original, spare, strange, whatever's fickle, freckled, who knows how. With swift, slow, sweet, sour, adazzled dim he fathers forth whose beauty is past change. And I know that Jesus, as a son of God, the creator of all this, even as a little child, I sang that song there to Omri, to Anya. He came as a baby and lived as a child. He wandered the lakeshore both on days calm and wild. He climbed in the olive trees, raced through the fields just to see what this growth of ours yields. And he loved the world, the world that he had made. But he gave it up to save us. He came as a baby, but died as our Lord. And for this he is forever adored. And it's that sense that Hopkins captures a priest in the 19th century, but he captures it, surely we can. And that's part of the world that God loves. And the men in it who see that and sing it and paint it, you know, it is. This is old. This is something else I discovered really strange. I never read first Timothy, and so I thought, okay, let me just take. And I went through this just about a couple of days ago. Here's what I found, which is so strange. It's Paul telling this young guy, Timothy, who is sort of. He's mentoring as a young pastor. And he said, we work hard because we trust in the living God, Elohim Chai, in the Hebrew, who is the savior of all, especially of those who believe. And I said, wow. I didn't expect to find this kind of universalism in this encouragement to Timothy.

[Chris Odiniecz]

But that's also everybody who doesn't believe.

[Anne Blackwell]

That's what I'm saying.

[Chris Odiniecz]

It's like the. It's those workers who somehow come at. Yeah.

[Anne Blackwell]

That's what I'm saying. It's because we trust in the living God, who's the savior of all men, especially of the. Because the ones who believe can draw near. And there's that part that in James that says, draw near to God and he'll draw near to you.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Well, and then they're all on the same road. It's just those who believe get to live their lives without anxiety and can.

[Anne Blackwell]

But maybe a lot of suffering. You know, here's. Yeah. Do you both.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah.

[Anne Blackwell]

Here's.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Here's this. But in Jesus, you see that the suffering is real. Right. Like you. You. We always say he's fully human, but he's not fully human if he can't sin, because that's a big part of being fully human. He's a special kind of human.

[Anne Blackwell]

Well, this is what Tori is seeing. But then he leaves out.

[Chris Odiniecz]

There's no apology if you haven't. And the only time he's really messed up is when he vanished for three days. And even then, he's not that sorry.

[Anne Blackwell]

Vanish.

[Chris Odiniecz]

When he was in the temple for three days and Mary and Joseph didn't know, and he was like, well, why didn't you look for me in the temple? There's no reconciliation. There's no apology from the child, except for, like, from there on, he obeyed them.

[Anne Blackwell]

Yeah.

[Chris Odiniecz]

And so if you've never made a mistake, how are you fully human?

[Anne Blackwell]

Well, that's a question, too, and that's a mystery that I don't know. I just know that he is radically human.

[Chris Odiniecz]

So what does that mean?

[Anne Blackwell]

Able to see everything that Hopkins sees and a lot more in the world.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Just appreciative of the beauty of the

[Anne Blackwell]

human condition, one aspect of it, but aware. He knows the heart of man. He knows those who want to kill him and those who don't want to kill him. He's very perceptive. He goes up to the women at the well, and he treats her as a seeker, completely as a seeker. And she ends up bringing her whole. A chunk of her fill.

[Chris Odiniecz]

So maybe he can, through empathy, he can be in his condition.

[Anne Blackwell]

He both has the spirit of God in him. He is. That's just a reality. It's another mystery.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah. Yes, That's.

[Anne Blackwell]

But the reason why I think it was necessary that he has to do it is because he's the only one that's taken on flesh. He is that part of God who has taken on the human body and can suffer and can die and nobody else can be that go between. Nobody else is both God and man. So the writer of Hebrews said it this way. For as much then as we as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same so that he, through death might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil. So one of the reasons I'm starting now to try to figure out how do you take not one word or two words or three, what you call them labels? I think it's. They're larger than labels, if they have any power at all. But label is just, you know, to identify, you know, or food, whatever it is.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Anne Blackwell]

But this is. This is. Language has power.

[Chris Odiniecz]

And.

[Anne Blackwell]

And the names of God have power. Abba, Father.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah.

[Anne Blackwell]

Who Jesus says to Mary Magdalene when he talks with her, that is the first person he talks with after his resurrection. He says, go tell the disciples that I ascend. And then he changes it to my Father and your father. Wow. My God and your God. Somehow with the resurrection, he could say now, not just our God teaching them to pray our Father, but that they now have a new relationship with God through the resurrection, that they can enter into his life. That Jesus, when he gives his life and enters into their death, it's because he has the power. He has the power to give life and he case death of every man. I'm starting to work with. Why did God have to come? Why did Jesus have to come the Son and die with that passage from Hebrews that he. When as soon as God as son enters into our death with each of us, for all of us, death changes because he has within him the power of life, and death is just the absence of life. So when Jesus comes and takes on our death and comes and joins us in death, death can't live. For anyone who joins Jesus, it's been already vanquished because where God is, there is life. Yeah. And he.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Where was it before? If we can talk in linear terms.

[Anne Blackwell]

Death, you mean? Yeah, it's the absence of life. And there was no way to live eternally with God at that point.

[Chris Odiniecz]

But if you were, you know, Moses or.

[Anne Blackwell]

I don't know. I don't know. That's part of. I don't know. I don't know if human beings have a choice after they die. All the friends of mine who are gorgeous Muslim believers, they talk about Jesus. They believe that he will rule with Muhammad at the end. I think when they go to the other side and. And Jesus has his arms out and they will run.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah. This is what CS Lewis says in the Last battle.

[Anne Blackwell]

But, you know, that's my whole. Yeah. And that's my. It's much more in keeping with the God who. The psalmists talk about, Psalm 145. Everything he does is dying. Love. That's what Psalm 45:45 says. And I believe it's just a love that we don't understand completely. It's so big. And it's coupled with justice, because that. That belongs. Let me just work a little for a moment because I need you, Please. On clarity is. I think it's when I say, why does Jesus have to die? And I think you're right, that God, my God, he's not talking about the Father. He doesn't address him as Father. He addresses him as God, that who is everything, Almighty Lord of hosts, Creator of the world, ultimate beginning and end of everything. You know, And Jesus as his Son, and the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of God, shares all that, too, as separate persons somehow, which I don't understand. And that one of those persons agreed with the Father to leave heaven and forever become man. Because Paul says, and Scripture teaches us that he has a resurrection body, that we will be like him like the first man, and like the second man, we will be like him with a resurrection body. I had took all these courses with a guy who was a British empiricist. They were my philosophy courses at a school of faith. And he said that First Corinthians 15 is one of the most exciting chapters of the Bible. It is the most exciting because for him, in terms of hope, because we will have sentient bodies. We understand as human beings, we understand through experience and our senses. And somehow it will be a heavenly version of that. Like Jesus could walk through doors and Jesus had all, you know, he didn't always look like himself on the road to Emmaus, you know, so we don't know what that is. Another mystery. But the promise is that our bodies will be like heads and we will be able to be human in heaven as well as on earth.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah. That's interesting too, because you'd think we would be like a drop in the ocean.

[Anne Blackwell]

We are a drop in the ocean.

[Chris Odiniecz]

But I mean that we merge. Oh. At night, it shows that you maintain your. Your ameness.

[Anne Blackwell]

This was. Is what's so shocking, that that's all we're asked to be after a decade or so ago. It's like, what am I supposed to do now? Do I have a call? Do I have a huge call? What am I doing? And this palean woman and priest gave me this Book talking about a guy, Rabbi Schneckner said, when I get to the other side and they ask me, they won't. They won't say you weren't Moses. They'll say you weren't Rabbi Schneckner. And so that's one of the things that just shocks me. How can God. Because the Old Testament, we saw God revealing himself in his Shekinah glory, some of it to different individuals, but this is to everybody. This is podunk me.

[Chris Odiniecz]

You said that word twice. What is Shekinah?

[Anne Blackwell]

Shekinah is that part of God's glory that can be apprehended by human beings when he comes, for instance. Oh. In fact, I wanted to put this in because this I love in the book.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Okay.

[Anne Blackwell]

Early on in the book, and I know how it's going to fit in now. God comes to Abram. He hasn't even changed his name to Abraham yet. And he. There's two scenes. I only put the latter one in the book so far. But the first one in chapter 15, is Abram is talking to God, and he's already old. I think he's probably at least in his late 70s. But God says, come out with me to unto Earth. And he addresses him as Lord Yahweh. There Yahweh being the name for I am that I am, which is who he reveals himself when he talks with Moses, his all being. It is present. I am that I am eternally present. And that's often attached with the word Lord, as opposed to God, who is Elohim, all powerful, all high, creator of everything. El olam. That which stretches. No, El olam is that which stretches beyond time, including space, but no stretches way beyond that because the universe is spatial.

[Chris Odiniecz]

So then all beings, all, whatever it is, allness.

[Anne Blackwell]

It's just we're so finite. We can't think of the infinite. You know, we always try to find it a standing place. You know, and we have a standing place in a person in who God is, in all these accumulations of things in his world and all of its plenitude.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah.

[Anne Blackwell]

And in the person of Christ, in all of his immense love and sensitivity and openness and. And rebuke to those who were not seeing God or seeing him, you know, because if they didn't, they had no way to become reconciled and one. Anyway, the, the, the, the going back to that whole thing about death, it's just. It says that they might. He might through death, destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil. And in one John, John Says Jesus appeared to destroy the works of the devil. I don't like talking about the devil or putting a label on him except destroyer, liar, whatever. Or personifying him. Because what I can see, I could see it. Evil. There is evil in the world. I can recognize it. I know. Not all the time, but when it's blatant, it's just evident there is evil in the world. And Jesus is coming to free men first from death. And that he does by just entering death, by dying. Because death, if death is the absence of God, absence of the one keeps. I mean, she's.

[Chris Odiniecz]

The devil is just selfish. He's preferring himself to the exclusion of others.

[Anne Blackwell]

To the extent we personify the devil. And a lot of my friends want to do warfare with him. I don't want to touch. I want to only fight under the arm of Beowulf. Like that thing Wiglaf did. We're reading Beowulf with the kids. Yes. You know, that's the only way I could possibly fight face even evil in its smaller forms, let alone if the personified version of the destroyer. But you're right, any people who have taken on evil tend to be completely self aggrandized. Self aggrandize.

[Chris Odiniecz]

That's the whole point of the rebellion.

[Anne Blackwell]

It's full of. But there are a lot of religious people that are full of pride. A lot of religious people are self aggrandizing. And that's only. That's when, man.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Well, that's the number one sin for us, is pride.

[Anne Blackwell]

Yeah. And that's one because it cuts us off. When I was teaching in prisons and sometimes when I college, some university, people said, what's the scariest word in the English language? You know, I asked Phoebe and Akuba that a couple years ago and they were whatever, two years younger than they are now. And Phoebe said, death. And I said, well, that's a good guess then. And it is. It's scary for a lot of people. For me it's solipsism. It's going.

[Chris Odiniecz]

I don't think she knew the word solipsism.

[Anne Blackwell]

No, I didn't like that. It's solipsism. It's going solo. It's going by yourself. And the guys in prison, many of them are going by themselves. And we have the option of going with God.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yes.

[Anne Blackwell]

And that's life. And Jesus very early on, right after he. Right early in his ministry and John said, the Father loves the Son and has given into his hands the power to resurrect whomever he will. And he Said the Father, who is the source of life, has made the Son the source of life. And that is for me, huge, that Jesus is man and God together, but somehow God gave him and into his hands as the obedient beloved Son, and consequently not, I can't say the model for us, but the image of what sonship and daughtership is, which is the obedience of love, even when it's costly.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah, but so that's another mystery because Jesus, as you told us in the beginning, was the Word. He created the whole thing. He created the whole aquarium. Then he entered it as a fish. How could he be afraid? How could he be sad?

[Anne Blackwell]

Because he knew, because he's going to be separated from the one who is his identity. You cannot carry the burdens of the whole sins of the entire world and face off with the destroyer. And still, because it's not only the destroyer that demands some payment for sin, it's a just universe. If justice is doing right by the wronged, and we are all wronged by the evil, by the Satan, but also replacing wrong the works with right, replacing the destruction and hatred with love, and that comes for us very slowly. We have to somehow come into the presence of God, forgiven, and then be able to stay there. And I think that's where the Holy Spirit comes in. He helps us actually, because I don't know what that means. I mean, I came to faith as a 9 year old or 10 year old and I've been living somehow with the Spirit in me, but so modest that I don't even know when I'm saying no to him.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah, but God made you that way.

[Anne Blackwell]

No, not.

[Chris Odiniecz]

It's not a fault of yours. Yes, it's your typical human.

[Anne Blackwell]

It's my finiteness, but it's also what anybody would call sin. It's my saying, no, I'm going my way. It's obedience to love. This is where I hesitate. If people were to read this and feel that what I said about law was to toss law out, he said, no, it's your school teacher. It's telling you what is going to entangle you and what's going to give you trouble. And I think that's for Christians as well as for anybody else, you know, and the trouble is that when Christians, some Christians define it, they only define it for the things that I'm drawn to.

[Chris Odiniecz]

That's right, that's right.

[Anne Blackwell]

And the things like jealousy or anger or self righteousness or gossiping or all of those things, those are not really.

[Chris Odiniecz]

That's right.

[Anne Blackwell]

Sins.

[Chris Odiniecz]

That's Absolutely right. It's amazing how God's moral code resembles so closely to my natural preference.

[Anne Blackwell]

And so, and so I don't know why God. I do know why God chose the slow way. He chose the way of love to redeem us and to grow us.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah.

[Anne Blackwell]

You know, it takes one second for a family of four to be destroyed by bad driving of the driver or somebody else. It takes decades to raise that family and nurture that family. It seems like destruction is stronger than love sometimes. And yet God chose the way of love, which required, I wondered, did it change their relationship to have the son become man forever as well as God? And he God. Christ ascended to the heaven, to God, back to God. That's what he says to his, to Mary Magdalene. I'm going to ascend to the Father and I am ascending to the Father. Go tell the brothers that I go to my Father and your father, Mary. My God and your God Mary. And he put that amazing message in the hands of a woman. John does that throughout his gospel for every chapter with a man there's a woman. And it's not accidental. I don't think that Jesus gave his mother into John's care because John was sensitive to women. He saw them. He saw the woman, the Samaritan woman. And. But the amazing.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Is this the woman by the well? Yeah, the amazing, yes. That was the gospel two weeks ago, three weeks ago, something.

[Anne Blackwell]

Well, I said, I don't know. The amazing. He saw her, he had this theological. He had political communication with her. She really wanted to engage him in everything, you know, and he engaged. And in the process he said, go and find your husband and bring here. And so many people make this the whole point of the story that she'd had five husbands and the one she had was not her husband.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah, yeah.

[Anne Blackwell]

And they don't say Jesus said that to just open up her heart. And she said, he's told me everything. I did. She's not offended by it.

[Chris Odiniecz]

No.

[Anne Blackwell]

She's drawn like a magnet.

[Chris Odiniecz]

She doesn't have that many barriers up to her of her own self image.

[Anne Blackwell]

He said, come and see him. And then at the end they said, we signed for your sake. But now we've seen him for our own sake and we know he's the, I think Christ the savior of the world.

[Chris Odiniecz]

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[Anne Blackwell]

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[Chris Odiniecz]

I think your observation about how much easier it is to destroy than create and how much easier it is to hate than love is also an example why we need the law. Because we live in this very comfortable society where we are recording on a microphone and we're sitting at a table and there's glass in the windows and none of it's broken, right? And we live in a civilization where people get along with strangers and there's rules of the road and you can travel across the continent speaking the same language, using the same money and not have to pay a single bribe at a single checkpoint. But there are parts of the world where that's not true. If we went to Khartoum or Mogadishu, we would be at the mercy of every gunman we met on every corner. So the law that we all sort of agree to protects us all. Stranger working with stranger. And at the foundation of it is this very, very, very Christian idea of the dignity and value of every single human being. The weakest especially. So I think that illustrates that we together as a one, I don't know, one humanity are way stronger than the private desires of each little rebel and each little tyrant.

[Anne Blackwell]

That's really beautiful. And, you know, may it be so. Yeah, may it be so. That's what we see that's at stake is, are you going to obey the law or are you not going to obey the law? Is anybody above the law, or is everybody under the law? You know, and the penalties are proportionate.

[Chris Odiniecz]

I had to go to traffic school for my speeding ticket. I had to pay $400, but nobody cut off my hand or blew up my car or shot me in the leg or anything like that. I was like, this is what you did. Here's your penalty. Now you're reconciled now you can move on.

[Anne Blackwell]

Well, and that punitive part of the law, I think, is you see that strongly in Mosaic law. But I do believe it is part of justice. And I've been thinking about Jesus came in terms what if we switch to sin rather than the suffering of death? And even with all suffering, I think it's amazing that God chose to give up his son and let him die for us so that he himself, God can be bonded to every sufferer that exists in Dostoevsky's brothers Karamazov. Dimitri, the oldest brother, not Dimitri, Ivan, the oldest brother, rebukes God for the suffering of me. But I think that in Jesus coming and taking on all sufferings of the Lord. I was reading this psalm. On that Psalm, it's Isaiah 53 that says, he was pierced through for our faults, he was crushed for our sins, but ours were the sorrows. He carried ours for the sufferings. And I have been short on seeing suffering as part of the reason why Jesus came. I have gone to sin because that was part of the evangelical background, you know, and both are huge. What you just said about law and infractions of law. There is in any just universe, there has to be some sort of payment for the cost. In fact, you can look at the cross as God's immense buyback from evil, paying the costs himself for all the saints of all the world. But you can also see him as bonding himself to all sufferers in the world. And that has been a huge, particularly, I think, in Latin America. That's been a huge pull of any place where their suffering has been and why, you know.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Okay, so I totally agree that God has not asked us to bear anything he wouldn't do himself. Because crucifixion, nobody else could do it with any. Yeah, but people do like, you know, little children are abused and people die of cancer and somebody gets shot by accident and somebody falls off a cliff.

[Anne Blackwell]

Evil, evil, not clothing.

[Chris Odiniecz]

But you could also. You can also die in a tsunami. That's not evil. Right.

[Anne Blackwell]

I think that.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Or bitten by a poisonous scorpion. That's not evil.

[Anne Blackwell]

I also think that God has some different experience of death than human beings do.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Say more.

[Anne Blackwell]

When Jesus is talking with the Sadducees and they say, whose wife will he be? You know, they kind of tear down the fact that there's resurrection. And he said, you don't understand God and you don't understand the power of God. And he said, for God, all people are living. And I think there's some. Until the last. I don't know. This is rungs. I don't have any. That's true.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Because we're not here.

[Anne Blackwell]

I don't have any access to. But I do believe that God probably has a very different relationship with death than we do. So death itself. Because he is so fully life and that he sees every single one of us and he is the Savior of all. Not Ja.

[Chris Odiniecz]

It might just be like the turning of the page or the ringing of the school bell at the end of the period. And we just. We really hope this period of school never, ever ends. Because what happens next. Actually, the next period might be even more interesting than this.

[Anne Blackwell]

Well, if it's. If it's with God.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah.

[Anne Blackwell]

And I think. I don't know. My hope is that we as Christians or as Muslims or as very conservative Jews will all of a sudden see that the stretch of God's covering love is much larger than we thought. But as Christians, that should never mean we don't see how precious the death of Christ is. Because it is what not only put him able to give life to all who come to him because he joined them in death, but also able to forgive them every sin that has ever occurred for anybody who chooses to go with God through him. And that through him may not be in this lifetime. I don't understand that. I don't understand it. I just know anybody that is able to go to God will go through God, who is both immensely, immensely tied in with man. Who knows why. Why he created a world like Hopkins describes so such plenitude.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah.

[Anne Blackwell]

And why he's able to somehow communicate. I don't think there's probably a person in the world who the Spirit of God hasn't visited at some point. And it may be an anon. If you're not mentally capable of that, may be the person that he's most able to catch and communicate with. I don't know what I've tried to do all my life is to root all this in Scripture. So everything that I've come to is looking closely, closely, closely at Scripture. And I've journaled in scripture since I was 10 years old. I've got umpteen journals at home. And I'm now just trying to tie it in more with my lived life, you know. But I treasure Scripture. It's not that I'm trying to do this extra scripturally. And certain things, like things that we've been talking about just aren't in Scripture. And I think that's because they're not in our domain. We're not supposed to know them, but I can go on what I know of the character of God and his astounding love for His Son. And I think when Jesus came, he knew that the life that he shared with God for all time was continuing in him when he was on earth. And he was going to be able to share that with his disciples right there. He says, I want them to be with me where I am so that they could see the glory. And I think as after decades of adoring God, or maybe after a day of adoring God, you enter that glory, that joy of the presence of God. That's why to say all of us ascend and come short of it. I said, whoa, yeah, you know, and, and we'll always come short of it, but we will are absorbing it, we are doing. I've been realizing, I think that evil is bounded. There are places it cannot go. Oh yeah, it cannot go into life.

[Chris Odiniecz]

No.

[Anne Blackwell]

It cannot go into life itself. It can take on, feed on human lives, but it cannot. It has no power of ultimate life within it. But I also think it can't touch God's joy. And when somebody is going through suffering and experiences God's glory in the middle of it, as the Lebanese are doing. I just was in an hour long video thing with an NGO in Lebanon that has a seminary and a school that are 90%, you know, 1600 kids, 90% Muslim and. But they're struggling right now. The seminary is giving some place to stay for people who don't have any home because it's in the less dangerous part of Beirut. But they are seeing God's hope and experiencing the joy of his presence in the midst of a really hard time. And I think we as human beings, I think it's a universal quality. We all have the capacity to suffer and I think we all have the capacity to connect. And it's how we connect and with whom we connect. But I don't know. I want to live more in the presence of God and grow more, not more holy. My friend Joanna came back. Yeah, I want to be more holy. I don't want to be more holy. I see very little of it in human beings. I see it in God, I see it in Christ, but I don't see much in human beings. I can see.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Well, it's liberating, isn't it, to live to. You don't have to be in charge of everything.

[Anne Blackwell]

Well, but that's, that's just acknowledging reality. I'm not in charge of everything.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah, but that's Less stressful, too.

[Anne Blackwell]

Well, I'm not doing it for stress. I'm doing it for relationship. And I'm doing it for joy. I'm doing it for joy. Yeah. I think the Presbyterians, I think, in the catechism have something. We are to live with God and to enjoy him forever. And that's. And that doesn't mean we're not supposed to constantly reach out. One of the things that I love is that there's a passage in. I think it's in 2 Corinthians that says, we love God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the God of all comfort, and he gives you comfort in your suffering so you could comfort others. And I think this is a huge call in our life to not just enjoy God, me, the me, me, mine, mine, mine, mine. Of many, many Protestant churches scares the heck out of. I'm expensive, I'm sure. But I. Saying, resupplying the pronouns to our.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Oh, I totally agree with you. What's that song? How Great Thou Art. You know, I always, always change the last verse to take us home.

[Anne Blackwell]

Right?

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah, that's because that's. That's the joy. That's the joy.

[Anne Blackwell]

That's.

[Chris Odiniecz]

I don't want to be there.

[Anne Blackwell]

But not only that, but when you see there. There have been people that I've met on the street and in Ubers recently and that, wow, that's such a lovely human being. And I want all the guys I've known in prison and the women I've known in prison classes and my students. I want us. It's that hour that gives me hope. And that's what I want to.

[Chris Odiniecz]

That's very Catholic.

[Anne Blackwell]

It's also very. It's. It's also very Christian.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah.

[Anne Blackwell]

I mean, of all versions of Christians. Yeah, it is. It's just that we forget it sometimes.

[Chris Odiniecz]

But I also think you've become holy that way. Because you start out by saying, I would like to live as God would like me to live, because this is too painful. And then you are find yourself in relationship, and then you find yourself under God's protective arm or wing or mantle. And then slowly, slowly, more and more of your desires become godly desires. And suddenly you're holy. Not because you're trying to be holy.

[Anne Blackwell]

Right? Yeah.

[Chris Odiniecz]

But because you aligned yourself with the way that gives you most joy. As you were saying.

[Anne Blackwell]

Well, it's align. It's the line, I want to align myself with the person of God with the person. Yeah, I understand that kind of love. I don't understand Alignment with ways, you know, because the ways are so.

[Chris Odiniecz]

This could also be why there's suffering, because it's the suffering that drives us to want the alternative. If everything were always easy all the time, if there were no injustice, disease, war, we would all think, hey, I'm doing a great job. And then we quickly realize I'm actually doing a terrible job or something terrible has happened to me. Where is my comfort? And it turns out to be not here.

[Anne Blackwell]

Yeah. And again, I'm not looking for comfort. It's the same thing in a relationship, a friendship, a love, deep love. I'm not looking for. Stay out of trouble. And to be comfortable. I want the relationship. I want to be there in. I mean, that's phenomenal. How could the God of all glory, of all power, of all reality, so far beyond us actually want to be in communication with each of these human beings? And not just the famous. It's not just the great.

[Chris Odiniecz]

It's the episode of Undercover Boss. Boss. Have you seen that one? I love it. He's the undercover boss. He just wants to see what it's like.

[Anne Blackwell]

It's not what he's. And he's not checking up on how faithful they are. No boys. No. No. He cares about being connected with us. Being actually to share the oneness that they have with each other is a

[Chris Odiniecz]

relational thing, which is his core characteristic as God triunes. God is love.

[Anne Blackwell]

Except that we just don't know how true love can be because we mess it up, fog it up like everything else we touch, you know, but we understand enough.

[Chris Odiniecz]

And that's okay, too, because that's how you. By error, by trial, by half steps.

[Anne Blackwell]

Yeah.

[Chris Odiniecz]

You'll get to the right. And we. Not you, but we. Right. We will get to the right thing.

[Anne Blackwell]

Yeah. Well, and the we, I find, worship corporately and is really joyful. And that's one of the great strengths of Protestants. They sing together at the tune of their lungs, and they worship God together. There is a kind of corporate connection. They also are aware of what's going on around the world in Christendom. Many, many cases in a. In a pretty vital way.

[Chris Odiniecz]

I love their small groups. When they get together on weeknight.

[Anne Blackwell]

I got a small group.

[Chris Odiniecz]

That's. That's a great. That's a good move.

[Anne Blackwell]

And prayer groups of women and of men and of people together. When you're praying together corporately, there can be a lot of power. So I think the Protestants both don't do it well sometimes, and they do it very well sometimes. You know, I'm talking about probably not mainstream. Mainstream. I think groups are amazing because they are just. And they're doing justice. So I think it's like, who are you? I want to be Rabbi Schneckner if I'm Rabbi Schneckner, and I want to be Ann if I'm Ann. We may have different calls where we're supposed to.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah, right. And we all have different gifts, and some of us are very clever in one way, and some of us are very gifted in the third way, and some of us have very little. But it might be just the right thing you have for the right place.

[Anne Blackwell]

Well, and I'm in this political chaos. I have recognized while I'm working with John that I have to love everybody who claims to be a Christian. I don't have options. That was Jesus's dying wish. So then I've had to find ways to do that. And one of the ways that I can do it is because I so value people who have a capacity to love. I can think of the many individuals who are loving their elderly parents or their kids who are struggling with disabilities or their neighbors who are in trouble, loving them. Well, better than I am. And so I have to give grace to the. What seem to be cultural aberrations.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah.

[Anne Blackwell]

And I know I've got my own cultural aberrations, you know, so it's. But that requires sometimes more humanity.

[Chris Odiniecz]

I think that's true for every man. Okay. So we were raised in this environment, and so we take it all very seriously. But Jesus, who came from the outside to be born a baby, also took it quite seriously.

[Anne Blackwell]

He took the people very seriously. He was constantly touching them, healing them, feeding them, talking with them, seeing the seeker in them, and loving his disciples.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that makes a lot of sense. So, Anne, what is going to be the title of the book?

[Anne Blackwell]

The working title has always been God With Us. Emmanuel. Emmanuel. But it's more and more as I look at it and live with it over these various permutations. It's God within us, ultimately, because that's what gives us hope, both the Holy Spirit and then the comment of Jesus that if you love me, the Father will love you and we will come and make our dwelling with you. Oh, there's one verse that I didn't get to once. He talks at the end about the Holy Spirit coming. He says, on that day, the Father will be in me, and I will be in you, and you will be in me. So. And the very last sentence that he prays to the God and the father in John 17, it said, I have given them, the disciples, your name, your identity, so that the love that you have for me may be in them and I may be in them. So there are all these mysteries. But somehow God's love for the Son and His love for us makes us our love for the Father whole. It becomes unified. And he works through the Father to Himself, and then from Himself back to the Father and to us and includes us, so that he really is our go between the holy, holy, holy and utterly transcendent God and still the Father that we can relate to and become our Father when we enter into his presence. Forgiven, because Christ did die to pay for our sins, the sins of the whole world. And that's a universal invitation for whomever. Anyway, the thing I wanted to end with was this image of Abram. He is not as old as he is when his son is finally born, but old. And he's left his place in Western Mesopotamia and been told by God to go down, goes all the way to Egypt and back. And now he's in Canaan. And God takes him out under the stars and says, look up there and count them. And he said, your progeny, your sons and daughters, will be more than these stars. And at that point, Abram talks to him as Lord Yahweh. But then a few verses later, there's another scene where Abram does something which my Jerusalem Bible, which is a French Catholic Bible, said was common among the chieftains of that era. He cuts the covenant with God himself. And the custom was, when you're trying to win favor with the chieftain, you take these bodies, animal bodies, and in this case, a couple of uncut birds, but severed animal bodies, and call a covenant between you and that stronger power. Most often, the stronger, the weaker power walks through the dead animal bodies and says, if this covenant cannot be kept, you can kill me. But in this case, what happens is he's done exactly what Lord Yahweh Tollah has told him to do. He has all these severed animal bodies around him and the birds. And the darkness comes at night, and he gets terrified, and he actually falls temporarily asleep. And then when he wakes up, he sees the firebrand and the flame of God coming through these dead bodies, saying, if this covenant cannot be kept, I will be broken. And that, for me, is the image, the combined image of the glory of God bringing life to a man whose body is as are many means in life. Yeah. Isn't it wonderful?

[Chris Odiniecz]

It's wonderful and very, very mysterious.

[Anne Blackwell]

Yeah, it is.

[Chris Odiniecz]

And so physical part of Embody.

[Anne Blackwell]

Well, see, that's it. He took on flesh so he could deal with all this. Nobody else could be both God and man. That's why the incarnation, when it's a theological word, is what. But when you say he took on flesh and blood so he could die with us, he could pay the cost for us and he could be with us and it's God himself.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Well, and is the only reason this is necessary is so that we can take him very seriously. Because otherwise he's an abstraction and it's a bunch of words. And now it's a physical thing and therefore you can understand it as a small human, but.

[Anne Blackwell]

Yes, but it's. It's not understanding, it's experiencing it.

[Chris Odiniecz]

But that's the only way you can believe it.

[Anne Blackwell]

Well, you believe it, but what you do is you live because of this. Joanna, when she prays God life them, life her. That's what he's doing. He's not just helping our understanding and giving us some comfort along the way. And then we'd be a slightly better person. He is lifing us. He carries us when we can't walk. He breathes life into us. And he does that as the Father and as the Son and as the Holy Spirit. And what I want to do is in these last years to more and more access that relationship that takes me out and causes me to be living water in the world. Because that's what John said. He talks. Jesus said, if you believe in me, there will be living water will well up in you and life and it will flow out of you. I can't get the exact word. Yes, but then John says, and he's talking about the Holy Spirit. And so at this point it's not just so I will understand things or I'll feel better or more comforted. It's that so we can be part of kingdom work, that we can be part of the lifing of the world that God is doing and giving, whether it's with your kids, whether it's with my friends, whether it's my ex students, whether it's in prisons or outside or in our country and someplace else, caring about whether or not people are eating and have shelter and have as Jesus did, but also letting somehow I'm hoping this book, if it ever gets written book, if it ever get booked it off of, will carry somehow the hope that God is great and he is love and he is glory. And the thing that you saw that was so overwhelming for, but must have been comforting for Abram was that God has taken this on himself and the flame of God and the smoke of God. That's the Shekinah glory that we can see. That's what he saw at that point. That part that can be physically sentient, understandable. That's why Jesus himself so physically sentient and understandable, touchable. That's what John says in First John. That which we have seen, which we have heard, which we have touched with our own hands. This is what we're passing on.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Well, I used to think that we say Father because that's the closest approximation we have to his generative, authoritative, loving relationship and that we just put that on God because that's the closest we have. But now I sort of think that God created parenthood and gave us children and gave us degenerative relationships because he gave us a little human miniature of what already existed.

[Anne Blackwell]

I agree.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Do you?

[Anne Blackwell]

I think that's even true in the physical, on the level of high physics. Now you see an interconnected world. That this is an image of somehow the interconnections between the person. So God, that there's much more interconnection, less, much less mechanistic. This, you hit that, that hits that, that hits that and you come to an end. This. Now even the physical world we're seeing is much more complex and interrelated than we dream.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Well, and also in being a parent, it's the only relationship that I know of where you prefer the well being of the other to your own. Interesting. Including marriage, right?

[Anne Blackwell]

Yeah.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Marriage. You're always like, well I, well I want mine. I want my recognition or my.

[Anne Blackwell]

Unless it's a really good marriage.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Okay, yes, that's right.

[Anne Blackwell]

And they want notes.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah, yeah.

[Anne Blackwell]

But every. Our relationships are constantly challenging to us because we are in need of transformation and that's what we get in the presence of God. Slowly, slowly. And God, somehow I don't think he trusts that. He trusts that. That we stop short of the full glory of God because it's not ours. That's not who we are. But we are transformed until we can be one with Him. That's in some sense not in the same sense that Jesus is one with God and the Holy Spirit, but somehow very similar. Like a child.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Yeah. A miniature.

[Anne Blackwell]

Yeah. Who knows? I don't. Okay.

[Chris Odiniecz]

I don't know either. Thank you Anne, for talking with me about this book. God within us. And would you like to close us in prayer?

[Anne Blackwell]

Father, it's you we crave, it's you we adore. We want to somehow live our lives so we are the fully the Ann that you hope us to be and the Chris that you are making us to be. We just pray Father that our vision and our service and our love for you will go deeper and deeper and our children will do the same and the people we around us will do the same and we will see with joy how you are training us up in love. We pray in Jesus name Amen.

[Chris Odiniecz]

Amen.

[Anne Blackwell]

Nails spear shall pierce him through the cross. Be born for me, for you. Hail the Word made flesh. The Babe, the son of Mary Chris

[Chris Odiniecz]

Odiniec and Anne Blackwell recorded this conversation on Saturday, March 28, 2026. That was Lazarus Saturday, the day before Palm Sunday. And this episode 113 of almost good Catholics is the very first one to be recorded in person, meaning two people sitting at a table instead of talking through a computer. Our music is from Josh and Margot of the Great Space Coaster Band. Check them out at www.GSCoasterBand.com and our logo, the image of the dog, is from a stained glass window at the Monastery of Santo Domingo de Silos in Spain and is taken from the website of the Dominican Friars of England, Scotland and Wales. Www.english.op.org I'm Chris Odinius. Email me [e-mail] I pray that God bless you and your family this coming Holy Week, the Triduum Easter and Easter Week. Happy Easter.

[Anne Blackwell]

This this is Christ the King whom shepherds, God and angels sing Sa.