Iron & Altar

"Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward Chuza." - Luke 8:3

Brother, Luke drops a job title into today's Gospel that is easy to read past and shouldn't be. Joanna is named as one of the women funding Jesus's ministry out of her own resources, and Luke identifies her by her husband's position: wife of Herod's steward. Chuza managed Herod's household and Herod's money. His job, literally, was steward - the exact word this whole month has kept coming back to.

We don't know what Chuza thought about his wife's involvement with a preacher his employer would eventually want dead. We know Joanna kept doing it anyway, using resources that ran through a household loyal to the man who executed John the Baptist. That's Ember Friday material. Today is the fast day this week specifically set aside for offering, and Joanna's offering came with actual risk attached to it - not comfortable generosity from a safe position, but money and support given from inside the house of the man least likely to approve of where it was going.

Here's the steward's refusal this week, sharpened one more notch. It's not enough to refuse the easy version of a hard call, which is where we started Wednesday. Today it's this: a steward refuses to let his position - his job, his access, his proximity to power or comfort or safety - become the reason he stops giving. Chuza's household should have made Joanna's support of Jesus complicated. It didn't stop her. Whatever position you hold that makes generosity feel risky right now is exactly where today's offering is supposed to happen.

Paul's reading underneath all of it is the reason any of this matters past this life. If Christ has not been raised, we are of all people most to be pitied - every offering, every risk, every quiet act of stewardship, wasted. But Christ has been raised, firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. What you offer today, from wherever you actually stand, is not spent into nothing.

Keep today's fast and abstinence. Then make one offering - money, time, or effort - that costs you something specifically because of the position you're in right now: your job, your reputation, your standing with someone whose approval matters to you.

Lord, I let my position talk me out of giving more than it should. Joanna gave from inside Herod's own house. Give me her nerve. Amen.