The Healing Power of Jesus -- Epiphany Bible Study with the Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
Episode 81 - Release Date 02/08/2025
This episode discusses the Bible Readings for the week of 02/09. Find the prayer service and readings here.
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In this episode, we are joined by the Rev. Dr. Ted Cole. Natalie met Ted when he became the minister at her local Episcopal Parish, St. John's Jamaica Plain. Natalie, James, and Ted were part of Praxis - an intentional community for faith leaders. Ted is an Episcopal priest, husband, and father of two boys. Ted especially reflects on the connection between the church and the home and the church and the world. He has extensive experience as a family and youth minister in his 20 year career as a priest. He is trained in dream work as a spiritual practice and provides training for forming church dream groups. He holds a Ph.D. in the philosophy of religion from Boston University, with a focus on mystical experiences in cross-cultural perspective.
Key moments in our conversation include:
01:09 Introduction to the Rev. Dr. Ted Cold
03:06 The Transfiguration
06:09 Healing Stories in the Scientific Age
11:56 Jesus's Teachings on Divorce
18:56 The First Will Be Last
You can read a complete transcript of this episode, here.
Things we talked about in this episode:
If you missed it, listen to our other sci-fi loving guest, the Rev. Aaron Ross who quoted Star Wars in speaking about Epiphany.
Stay connected to Ted+ on his church website: www.stjohns-jp.org. You can listen to his recorded sermons and services here: www.youtube.com/@stjohns-jp
00:00:00 Natalie Thomas
Hello and welcome to Bedtime Chapel's weekly scripture study episode. I'm Natalie Thomas.
00:00:05 James Thomas
And I'm James Thomas. We are deacons in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts.
00:00:09 Natalie Thomas
And Bedtime Chapel grew out of a shared desire of ours to support families who are trying to know, love and follow Jesus in a post Christian world.
00:00:19 James Thomas
We offer a nightly prayer service that includes a short gospel reading. In this episode, we will be covering the readings for the fifth week of Epiphany.
00:00:27 Natalie Thomas
And we are here today with our good friend, the Reverend Dr. Ted Cole, who we know from our shared ministry in the Diocese of Massachusetts. Ted and I were actually part of a shared clergy colleague group at one point called Praxis together. And James and I just have a great level of respect for Ted's commitment to scripture and also commitment to mystery and the ongoing revelation of God.
00:00:51 Natalie Thomas
And so, Ted, we are just really glad for you to be here with us over the next three weeks. And we'll start just by giving you a chance to introduce yourself and to share a little bit about your faith journey and current place in relationship to the church.
00:01:09 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
Thank you so much, Natalie and James. It's an honor and a delight to be with you and to share this part of your ongoing bedtime prayers journey. My journey with God in Jesus goes back to my preteen years in a really intentional way. I was not raised in the church. My parents divorced when I was very young, and neither was a churchgoer at the time of my childhood.
00:01:30 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
I remember Christmas services that some of their Catholic friends might take me to. And I remember the mystery of darkness and candlelight and the story of the baby Jesus being born. And that made an impression on me and like a seed being planted in my heart. And then when I hit adolescence, early adolescence, I wanted to get to know God.
00:01:50 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And I knew if you're going to get to know God, you need to read the Bible. And my mom, God bless her, got me a Bible and I started reading it. And I've been engaged with the Bible and with God and Jesus ever since. And it's a winding road with many turns and dips and peak experiences, but it's led me to being an Episcopal priest at a parish in Jamaica Plain, wonderful neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts.
00:02:18 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And in my years of ministry, it's been very much thinking about what does it mean to be church in the world, and if God is everywhere, what's the purpose of this particular church community? And I see so much connection and continuity. The church is not set apart. We're set in. And we're set in to serve, which is what I see in Jesus's life as we see it in the Gospels and in the best of the actions of his followers.
00:02:42 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And we strive to carry on in their lineage in our day.
00:02:48 James Thomas
Thank you for that. Thank you for the introduction. And I am reminded as you talk about where the seed was planted in my own coming to be a regular churchgoing person and the journey towards the church. Somewhere along the line somebody said to me, well, if you want to get started, just sit down and read the Gospel of Mark.
00:03:06 James Thomas
And I've been enjoying these past few weeks as we're in the heart of Mark now. And we open this week with the story of the Transfiguration. What role does this story of Jesus and the disciples play in your personal faith? How do you think about the transfiguration of Jesus Christ? And how might people less familiar with the event or with this scripture understand it?
00:03:26 James Thomas
And how might we explain it to what we call the bedtime age children?
00:03:31 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
The Transfiguration is one of the marvelous, I'm going to use a weighted word, almost magical stories in the Gospels. And it's an especially important story because we see it in our three synoptic gospels, the Gospels that all see Jesus the same way. Matthew, Mark and Luke. And the images that are in this story we can think about almost like a dream, play it with like symbols or like a really cool fantasy story or fairy tale that we're reading.
00:04:03 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And, and what was this evoke in us? What do we think about? How might we feel about imagining ourselves having this experience? And what I love about this story in my own journey and why it's so important is that we see Jesus manifesting God's presence and he hasn't been resurrected right? The life he's living now, he is manifest in God's presence, in his fullness and in this moment in time.
00:04:30 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
The disciples, the select disciples that he elected to bring up to the mountain with him, they're able to see it barely, right? I believe it's Luke who says that they almost fell asleep, right? They were so overcome, but they fought to stay awake and to see what happened. But even they don't really understand what's happening.
00:04:48 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And the idea that Jesus is being met by Moses and Elijah in this moment, as he's preparing to take the decisive step of his life and ministry and to go to Jerusalem for the last time, gives us a way to think about the past. Moses embodying the law and faithful living, and the future.
00:05:09 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
Elijah also lived in the past, but in Jewish tradition was expected to return, to return when the Messiah comes. So the Elijah is an invitation to think about the future. Elijah doesn't die in the biblical story. He's lifted up to heaven in a chariot of fire to come back again when the Messiah appears and when the people are ready down the road.
00:05:31 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
So here's Jesus in this moment, in the fullness of time is manifest in him. And. And what is it that we hear from God? Listen to him. Listen to him. Listen to what this man, this my son, this manifestation of my presence in the world. Listen to what he has to say. And I am centered on Jesus, and I hear that, I hear that direction, that this is someone who's just especially important for us to listen to and to learn from.
00:06:01 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
Our lives will be enriched and blessed and will be a blessing if we can take what he wants us to understand to heart.
00:06:09 Natalie Thomas
That's so beautiful, Ted. Thank you for that. And thank you too, just for reminding me about the importance of paying attention to how Jesus is revealing himself to us through one another and through the world around us and through our children as well. So the boy in Mark 9, which is a story that families will hear Monday night, has the symptoms of what most people today would identify as epilepsy.
00:06:40 Natalie Thomas
And many people in our time would understand that the basic medical causes of this condition and know that treatment with medication has been effective for a while now. As we've journeyed through Mark, we've come to know Jesus as a healer, to use your word, to have some magical, marvelous capacity for healing of all sorts of diseases ascribed to supernatural forces.
00:07:04 Natalie Thomas
But today we realize that most of those could be cured at the urgent care or even maybe just at the local drugstore. And so we're curious from you how families can read these stories and continue to draw near to Mark's Jesus as healer in the scientific age.
00:07:23 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
A wonderful question to ask in this time and in this era and here in Massachusetts, I think especially in the part of the world that we live in that is so rational and scientific and materialistic, it feels like there's a tension between Jesus manifesting all these healing powers in the Gospels. And we don't see that in our day and age.
00:07:50 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And so how do we reconcile these two things? And I have to say for myself, I don't know how helpful this will be, but nevertheless, I'm just going to say it right. I loved reading the Bible and I loved watching Star Trek when I was a kid. Didn't see much tension between those two things.
00:08:10 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And the idea to me of Jesus healing ministry is that our God is the God of life and abundant life. And there's healing power in our relationship with God. And yes, that manifested in a particular way through Jesus, but that's manifesting whenever there is a healing touch, a healing word, a medical treatment, a life saving operation.
00:08:33 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
Whenever that's happening. That's the same healing power that was in Jesus manifesting in and through us. And there's no tension between that. There's no reason to fret about what we see as hard to believe or magical stories in the Gospels. There was something about Jesus. I think that's why we're still talking about him here 2000 years after he walked the earth.
00:08:57 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
But the essential thing was love and healing and compassion and mercy and care and hope and encouragement. That's the essential thing manifesting here. And that the, the call to us is to be persistent in those things, which I think is the heart of this story. Right. The disciples are trying to help this child and they can't.
00:09:20 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And you know, Jesus shows up and of course he's Jesus, so, you know, says the word and the boy recovers and heals. But the point, the takeaway is something you just have to keep going, right? You just have to keep at it. You have to keep up your prayer, you have to keep working at it.
00:09:35 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
You have to not give up. I find that so much more wholesome and fills my heart much more than wrestling with what do we do in this scientific age with these miraculous stories. And that may not be satisfying to some, but it's how I land and how I would encourage parents to talk about this with their kids.
00:09:56 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
The healing power that Jesus had then, that's with us now, right. It's here in this aspirin that you're taking. This when you see the doctor, the doctors bringing Jesus's healing touch to you, then it's. There's continuity and there's life affirming energy in it rather than just tension about what's scientific and what's not.
00:10:16 James Thomas
Thank you.
00:10:17 Natalie Thomas
Yeah, you know, we're recording this in winter, flu season, cold season. And so what's going on in my mind as I'm hearing you is just all of the nights or the moments during the days or the nights where what Phoebe or Steven, our children needed was, yes, the Tylenol. Yes. You know, yes, the medication, yes.
00:10:41 Natalie Thomas
The visits to the doctor and also the nearness of love, you know, that the, that nearness of love and the healing presence that was in our relationship. And yeah, just so thank you for. For really connecting the dots on how the healing that we see is still happening around us today. That healing through love.
00:11:03 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
Yes.
00:11:05 James Thomas
Okay. You know, you mentioned your love of reading the Bible, and it's been important to us since we started this a few months ago that we not censored the readings. We're just moving through the lectionary and reading the Scripture. We tend to think that one of the more laudable aspects of our tradition, whether you want to say Anglicanism or Episcopalianism or classical Protestantism more generally, is this idea of critical engagement with the text.
00:11:32 James Thomas
We take them seriously, if not literally. This week we have two quite challenging readings for families. So we're going to have on consecutive nights a reading where Jesus talks about chopping off body parts to avoid going to hell. And then the next night we have a. What could be in many places a difficult reading for some of our prayer parties.
00:11:56 James Thomas
We have Jesus teaching on divorce, which we know is a reality in many faithful households out there who may be joining us for these prayers. We did not censor out mark 101 12, but how might we hear that passage in a loving Christian household where divorce is an aspect of family life?
00:12:18 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
I so appreciate the not hiding from these passages, James and Natalie. And I appreciate the question as a child of divorce and as a divorced person. So let me tell you how I engage with this personally and then maybe we can open it up and think about how we might hold it communally.
00:12:37 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
I, in my own heart, journey, was determined because I experienced the pain of a divorced marriage and being a child of a divorce, that I would never divorce my partner. Were I so blessed as to find one and to be married? And there was a judgment on my parents about that. Right. I held some of my pain in how I grew up and in this separate households rather than experiencing the togetherness and the wholeness of a married parent set, I was looking down on them and not really looking with compassion at what happened in their journey to understand them with grace and with a deeper love.
00:13:22 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And so it turned out when I met someone and fell in love and we went on a marriage journey that when the fullness of time unfolded for us, we realized we can't continue in this relationship. We've come to a place of clarity that this marriage is not holding, doesn't have deep enough roots to last and sustain the things that we both want in life.
00:13:47 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And so we divorced. And for me, one of the deepest shifts that occurred, as awful as that experience was, which it was one of the deepest shifts that occurred, that was healing, was suddenly I stopped judging my parents and what they went through when they separated and divorced. I was not so naive anymore about how hard it is to commit to loving another person and going on a journey through life with them.
00:14:18 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And I was grateful for the time that we had my former wife and I. And I had so much more compassion for the journey that my parents had been on and what had unfolded in their life and how it impacted me. And to me, that was God entering into all this. That's the personal, experiential aspect of it.
00:14:41 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
When we're hearing Jesus talk about divorce, we have to remember a completely different era and time in this era that Jesus is living in, he is talking to men. We can kind of assume he's addressing men here. Women may have been present, but he's in an active dialogue with men who are not asking him this question in good faith.
00:15:00 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
They're trying to trick him to publicly humiliate him. And so he calls them out for hypocrisy, and he calls them out for exploitation, because in that era, men had the right to dismiss a woman for any reason, any cause, and to send them out into a patriarchal culture where they would have be at risk of extreme poverty and harm and exploitation.
00:15:25 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And he is saying, you can't do that. You don't treat people that way. People are not to be dismissed as of no value and importance so that you can go on to another relationship or someone else, that you can't do that. And he also, because he's Jesus, calls women out as well, recognizing even though we have this relationship of exploitation, women, you too, you need to commit, right?
00:15:49 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
You need to honor your commitments. I think I put not so much weight on that, given how unfair and unbalanced the culture was. But in the church's journey around divorce, it's been a slow walk for us. For the Episcopal Church, it's been a slow walk for us to recognize that this is a deep, vulnerable, tender reality in our lives, marriage and divorce.
00:16:13 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And we should be caring and pastoral and healing about it, rather than judgmental about it. And so we're in, I think, a place where the values that we as Episcopalians have around marriage and relationship and divorce are the ones that have the most staying power. Strangely, we honor broken relationships and seek to bring care and healing into those people and families that are surrounded.
00:16:40 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And rather than judge an outcast. And I'm grateful for that because it's been healing for me in my own journey. And I would hope folks can hold that wider context and not just get caught up in this particular reading, but see it in a wider journey of compassion and respect and dignity of all people.
00:16:59 Natalie Thomas
Thank you so much for that, Tad. I know that your personal story is going to connect with so many people. And even for me, as I heard you speaking, my heart was unlocking towards some of my own judgments at my parents marriage. So I appreciate your honesty and vulnerability there and what that witness offered to me and to many other people.
00:17:22 James Thomas
Yeah, it was really, really lovely. Thank you for opening up and sharing that. And I know it will be meaningful to many who are trying to unlock these texts. You mentioned the reading in the whole context of the story. One thing that I have tried to remind people about in my own ministry, when we're sharing on this particular text, that some scholars theorize that Mark would have been read or performed almost out loud.
00:17:46 James Thomas
Some said that Mark is, and you can actually still see this from time to time. You'll see it advertised where somebody just, you know, from memory will proclaim Mark in a sort of quasi theatrical setting. And if you were, if you had heard Mark in that full sweep, then you would sort of recognize in that context that these are the people that did for John just a few minutes ago.
00:18:11 James Thomas
And this is the question that they did for John on this question of divorce. And so in the whole context of the thing, it's not, you really have to remember, it's how Jesus is addressing the opposition that is now as we move towards the end of the story brewing against him. And obviously we just, only a few nights ago we learned of John's fate and the violence that befell him on the same point really.
00:18:34 James Thomas
So it's a good reminder for everyone to hear the whole sweep of the scripture story as opposed to sort of wallowing in a verse or two as are often weaponized against human beings without compassion, using scripture as judgment as opposed to using scripture for healing and love and compassion as we're discussing today.
00:18:55 Natalie Thomas
Thanks, James.
00:18:56 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
Amen.
00:18:56 Natalie Thomas
Yeah, yeah, thank you for that. So on that note about the exploitation that you referenced, buried in the midst of all of the stories that we're hearing is arguably the main idea of Jesus's message that the first shall be last and the last shall be first. We hear that both in chapters nine and ten.
00:19:18 Natalie Thomas
And so we'd love to hear from you about the through line of the first shall be last and the last shall be first, but both in Mark, but also how in the present day the church can testify to this truth in this so called quote golden age of America, where worldly wealth and power are so lauded.
00:19:42 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
I see this declaration from Jesus about the first shall be last and the last shall be first as a kind of summary presentation of the entire biblical Exodus, prophetic tradition. And this is part of the wonder and power of being in relationship with our God, who is where real power lies with God, not with Pharaoh, not with Caesar, not with wealth.
00:20:13 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
Real power lies with God. And what matters is what is our relationship with God? And are we honoring with integrity God's call to us to look out for those who are oppressed or in need or hungry or naked or sick or in prison. And exercising on God's behalf, care, compassion and engagement, seeing and entering into relationship to bring dignity to folks who are in those difficult straits rather than fawning over those who are wealthy, famous, powerful.
00:20:51 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And that to me makes, you know, there's. Throughout the Gospels, you know, people refer to Jesus as a prophet, A new prophet has arisen. And that, I think we've missed the depth and the significance of that in some of our understanding in the broader church, there is continuity, profound continuity with the heart of the Hebrew scriptures, with the heart of the Exodus story, and with the heart of what Jesus is bringing into the world.
00:21:20 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And that what's remarkable for us about Jesus as gentiles, thousands of years and thousands of miles from where Jesus exercised his ministry. What's especially important for us about Jesus is that Jesus saw that this, this impulse that we see where God is the God of the least and the oppressed, not the rich and the powerful.
00:21:43 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
That's a message for all people, not just the Jewish people. It's a message for all people. That's what gives the church to me, dignity and purpose. We carry this sacred story, this sacred tradition, this sacred truth about who God is and what God is about into the world beyond the circle of our Jewish brothers and sisters, to all people.
00:22:08 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
And at our best, that's what we do. And at our best, we've made the world a more compassionate place. We've helped people who were marginalized and oppressed find their dignity. Is that woven into the suffragette movement? It's woven into the civil rights movement. And it needs to be woven into our struggles today as we see the wealthy and the powerful make not unprecedented.
00:22:32 The Rev. Dr. Ted Cole
I wish I could say it was unprecedented, but remarkably bold grabs at power and influence in our country. It looks like power is with them, but it is not real. Power is with God. And so we want to look to see where is God active in our day and age. With those last, because if we join with them, we will be first.
00:22:55 Natalie Thomas
Yeah. I really appreciate the clarity of that statement that you're offering about God. Where is God? And where do we see that God resides and dwells in the scripture and in the gospel stories where Jesus moved, you know, through the earth. One of the trickiest things for me in this current age is that often those who have power and wealth will ally themselves with God.
00:23:21 Natalie Thomas
Right. That God is rewarding with power, God is rewarding with wealth. Or this call back to faith, the, you know, even from the presidential office, calling people back to faith and allying that faith with these grabs for worldly power. So it's just really important for us as a church, for us as parents, for us as humans who are following Jesus to remember where Jesus is found in, in his earthly life and let that draw us to where God might be found today.
00:23:53 Natalie Thomas
So thank you for that, Ted, and thank you just in general for joining us. And thank you to James for being on this journey with us. I love the word, the journey. We use that word, too. So thank you for being on this journey of Bedtime Chapel. It has been a journey. And thank you to the wider community of people who are praying with us.
00:24:11 Natalie Thomas
We are praying with you nightly and we want to be in touch with you. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram as Bedtime Chapel. Follow us, let us know what's working and not working for you. And you can email us bedtimechapelmail.com and all of this is on our website, bedtimechapel.com and until next time, we will be praying with you.
