My Wife Is Joanna, Wife of Chuza

• It’s a biblical reference. Nothing that weird, here. •

[2 MIN READ]

Executive Summary: This piece is an invitation for you to join my wife in her campus ministry work with me in mine.

I parted ways with my job as an academic librarian in 2022 after 17 years. Maybe it was time, professionally. It clearly was time divinely, because it’s what God permitted. This is one important principle of God’s will. If you want to know his desires, just look at the past. No matter how much we, his created beings might want to argue, nothing has transpired that is outside of the Omniscient and Omnipotent One’s intent.

Until February this year, I had been an independent volunteer at Arcadia University‘s Arcadia Christian Fellowship for the last 4 years, during which time Wife has been my sole financial ministry partner. To be classically glib (for me), it’s time for that to change.

This is not to say say that she is boots-on-the-ground on campus with me, although it does happen occasionally. It is to say that she is engaged in my ministry work with me through her financial support: monetary donating is ministry work.

Even Joanna had more than just herself. It is she — with Mary Magdalene, Susannah, and many others — who supported Jesus and his Emotional, Social, and Spiritual core of disciples once he began his ministry proclaiming the Good News of the coming of the Kingdom. The Gospel writer Luke makes this clear:

“Soon afterward he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means” (Luke 8:1-3 [ESV]. BibleGateway.com.)

Why is Wife singularly Joanna from among all of them? I just love that her husband is the household manager of King Herod, Jesus’ prominent antagonist (Luke 23:6-12 [ESV]. Bible Gateway.com.). Scripture doesn’t report if Chuza himself is a Follower of Jesus, but if he is, he’s plant right in the house of the spiritual enemy. If he isn’t an FoJ, then he’s primed to learn about Jesus from his wife to become one. So, calling me Chuza might be weird, but it’s no more weird than me calling Barbara Joanna.

Anyway, in closing, I invite you to please join my Joanna in ministering grace through Financial, Emotional, Social, and Spiritual (FESS) partnership to Arcadia University’s student body, Christian, pre-Christian, and non-Christian. Let us influence the household of the enemy together.

Read more: The Initial Need