Joanna at the empty tomb

Only in Luke’s Gospel do we come across Joanna, and he mentions her twice.

Is this because, when he was preparing his ‘orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us’, she was one of the ‘eye witnesses and servants off the word’ whose story had been ‘handed on’ to him (1.1,2)?

She is there with Mary Magdalene, Susanna ‘and many others’ at 8.2: ‘some women who [Jesus] had cured of evil spirits and infirmities... who provided for [Jesus and the twelve] out of their resources’; a group the nature of which we would not have had any idea were it not for this verse. 

She is ‘the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza’, which makes her a plausible source for the inside information about Herod’s involvement with and attitude to Jesus trial (23.8-11), something which Luke alone records.

She seems likely to be among ‘all [Jesus] acquaintances including the women who had followed him from Galilee [who] stood at a distance, watching these things’ at the crucifixion (23.49) and who ‘saw the tomb and how his body was laid’ (23.54), in which case, in a position to provide further first hand details.

And she is definitely there again in this morning’s Easter Gospel, at the empty tomb with Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and other women, who ‘told all this to the eleven and to all the rest’ - which those they told 'took for an idle tale' (24.9-11).

So, I spoke this morning about feeling in touching distance of these first reports, and of what seems the importance of these first reports having come from those who had been mentally and physically damaged in the past, those whose witness also seemed so easy to dismiss or overlook.  They already knew, of course, that encounter with Jesus could be transformative.

And, although I didn’t explore this, perhaps Luke learns of Joanna and of Herod’s court from Manean, one ‘brought up with Herod’, part of the earliest church at Antioch, and one of those who commissions Barnabas and Saul for ministry (Acts 13.1-3), a ministry in which Luke appears to have shared.

Meanwhile, the photographs show decorations ready at St James’ and at home first thing today.