Friday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

A Reflection for Friday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

Accompanying him were the Twelve
and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities,
Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out,
Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza,
Susanna, and many others
who provided for them out of their resources.

Find today’s readings here.

Don’t you love when gender roles in the Gospels surprise you?

That happens for me in today’s passage from Luke, which doesn’t feature a parable or a healing or really much of a story at all. Today’s reading is about the logistics, the movements of Jesus and his followers—who they were and how they traveled to spread his message during Jesus’ public life.

Luke mentions, of course, the Twelve Apostles as Christ’s companions on the journey, but he also names three women and alludes to “many others” who traveled with them. The three women Luke names are Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Susannah. While Mary Magdalene is certainly the best-known of the pack today, Joanna’s positionality and her involvement with Jesus’ ministry is fascinating; Luke mentions that her husband is an administrator or steward for Herod, the tetrarch of Galilee mentioned elsewhere in the Gospels. It’s interesting to consider the connection between the powerful establishment around Herod and the countercultural movement around Jesus. When it comes to Susanna, we don’t know anything about her other than what’s mentioned here, simply that she knew and worked with Jesus.

Luke tells us that these women had, perhaps physically or spiritually (or both), experienced healing at the hands of Christ. Whatever that looked like, it must have been profound for each of them if it convinced them to, like the Twelve, leave their own homes and lives and (literally) follow Jesus. At the end of today’s passage, though, comes the gender role surprise: After naming the women, Luke says that they “provided for them out of their resources.”

Much of the time, when we’re reading Scripture, we’re reminding ourselves that gender politics in the days of Jesus (and before) were different than what we’re accustomed to today. We train our brains to be unsurprised when women in biblical stories are unnamed, when they occupy space as secondary characters, when their interactions with men don’t sit comfortably in our modern playbook. But then come passages like the one today, and we’re reminded that the picture is not so simple.

“Provided for them out of their resources”? You heard that right. Luke suggests here that the women financially supported Jesus and his band of followers as they traveled through cities and villages. They came from enough money to share it with the group and support the cause, and they set a standard for sharing of resources in early Christian communities. And while it’s certainly meaningful that in his day and age he was including women in his ministry, let’s call a spade a spade: According to Luke’s account, Jesus literally and practically couldn’t have done it without them.

Luke uses the verb diakoneō here and elsewhere in his Gospel to denote a ministry of hospitality. (Translation notes like these, in addition to other historical evidence, fuel a conversation around the possibility of ordaining women deacons in the modern church.) The explicit reference to possessions paints a picture of a practical hospitality and generosity in addition to a spiritual one of welcome, community and kindness. Among Jesus’ friends, people took on roles that benefited the group as a whole. Luke’s account teaches us that women were not relegated only to the roles we might expect.

If the Gospel message has offered us some healing, we can model ourselves after these women by asking the question: What can I give? How can I support? What do I have to offer my community? Mary, Joanna, Susanna and the women not even named here remind us that we can think beyond the roles society might have set out for us. We know what we have to give. Our healing and recognition in the eyes of Christ encourages us to gather up our resources, physical and spiritual, and share them with the community.