New Testament · New Testament
Joanna
“It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles.”Luke 24:10
Biography
Joanna was the wife of Chuza, the manager of Herod Antipas's household — an elite position at the court of the same ruler who had imprisoned and executed John the Baptist. She had been healed by Jesus and became one of a group of women who traveled with Jesus and the Twelve, supporting his ministry 'out of their own means.' Luke is the only evangelist to name her. She appears both at the beginning of Jesus's public ministry in Galilee and on Easter morning — she was among the women who went to the tomb, found it empty, and ran to tell the apostles. She carried the first news of the resurrection to the people who most needed to hear it.
Spiritual Lesson
Joanna's story pushes back against the idea that discipleship requires poverty or social marginality. She was a woman of wealth and social standing who used both to advance the gospel without being asked or commanded. She also reminds us that the most important news in history — the resurrection — was carried first by those whom their culture had trained not to believe. The women went to the tomb not because they expected a resurrection, but because they loved a person. They found something beyond what they went looking for. Faithfulness in the ordinary acts of devotion — going where you are supposed to go, doing what love requires — sometimes leads you to a discovery you never anticipated.