Joanna

Let's talk about Joanna for a minute. 

If you're wondering who Joanna is, you can find her mentioned by name only twice - in Luke 8 and 24. Joanna was the wife of Chuza, who was King Herod's chief steward. She also happened to be a follower of Jesus. 

Most of the time when you hear Joanna mentioned, it's in the context of the crucifixion of Jesus. That is, someone has done some deep digging through their Bible and discovered aha! Joanna was a disciple of Jesus, and Joanna's husband was King Herod's chief deputy, so obviously, Herod had heard a lot about Jesus "through the grapevine," as it were, because Joanna obviously had her husband's ear, and he might even have been closet follower of Jesus when, you know, it was socially appropriate for him to do so, and he in turn had Herod's ear, so he probably told Herod a lot of stuff about Jesus and voila! Jesus is known by the king. 

This is an interesting take. And it's not one I think we can outright dismiss. But I think it's lazy...and I think it makes a lot of character assumptions that change the way we read the story. 

For example, if Herod is getting his information about Jesus from Chuza, what kind of king is he? Jesus is a big thing happening in the region. Everybody's talking about Jesus. Everybody's coming out into the streets to follow Jesus around. It's not like Herod looks out his window and see a single guy walking around who seems kind of different; there's always a crowd around Jesus. Any king worth his weight would take notice of this. 

Not only that, but there's talk among some of Jesus's followers (and some who are not His followers), that He's the rightful "King of the Jews." Pilate will even write this on a proclamation above the Cross and hang it for all to see. In three languages, so that everyone can read it. Now, if you're the actual appointed king at the moment, don't you think you'd already know something about this guy walking around that some are claiming to be king? Don't you think you'd want to know everything about Him? He's a threat to your position, potentially. 

So there's a Guy in the kingdom of Herod who draws crowds wherever He goes and who is proclaimed by many to be some kind of King, and the feminist theologians, who want Joanna to have some grand, big role in the story of Jesus, tell you that she's the one who...maybe indirectly...told Herod everything he knew about Jesus. So that when it gets down to it and Jesus stands trial, the leadership of the region already knows something about Him. 

See, Luke is also the only Gospel writer who tells us that Pilate sent Jesus to Herod first, then Herod sent Jesus back to Pilate. Is it because Joanna had told Herod so much about Jesus that he was willing to let Him go? Had Joanna told Herod so much that Herod has talked with Pilate already, maybe numerous times, about the Man? 

When Jesus stands in the royal courts of the region, there's a certain interpretation of the Scripture that wants you to believe that Joanna's voice was somewhere in the room. 

Maybe it was. 

But that requires a lot of conjecture, a lot of interjection of our own cultural norms and maybe even our desires, and a lot of sanctified imagination. 

I think there's an easier way to interpret something meaningful from Joanna that doesn't require all that.... (I'll tell you tomorrow.)