O is for the "Oh, no!"

Day 3
that old Chuza must have bellowed when wife Joanna came home on Easter Sunday morning. Joanna, says Luke, was a member of the burying team (Lk. 24:10), a devout follower who had taken up with Jesus early on, surely to the teeth-gnashing chagrin of her high-placed husband, Herod's steward (Lk. 8:3). It cannot be that Chuza was a mild and pleasant mate. One doesn't work for a boss like his without aping the man's spirit.

This too is a safe guess, that Chuza, happiest of all the husbands in Jerusalem on Friday night, had just spent the Sabbath rubbing in his gloat. Who knows? Maybe he added a wallop or two. Brutes are like that. Deep pleasure there was in pointing out her error, in pounding her down to her former lower place. Intrinsic to the pleasure was the satisfaction of knowing himself to be right all along; still better, of hearing her say so, bitterly.

At the end of their eruptions bullies throw bones. It lets them feel noble. It serves also to remind the dogs of their dependency. Chuza's bone, perhaps, was to tell his wife that yes, she could haul her sorry tail to that grave tomorrow morning and put an end to this Jesus nonsense once and for all.

She does so--and comes home a resurrected woman, again terrible in her dignity only more so, again gently yet fiercely defiant in her insistence that Christ, not Chuza, is Lord and Master. By the way, of Christ she says this gladly, without fear or shame. Such a one, she suddenly sees, is a lord to die for, he having died for her. Now she also knows what once she had only guessed, that his is a mastery of genuine service by which the lowly, so masterfully served, are lifted up as mistress and lady of a worth that beggars the likes of wee silly Herod.

We speak here, of course, of a worth before God. Here too Easter offers something brand new, a brilliant light puncturing the darkness and impervious to it. The day before, her Jesus dead, Joanna was measuring her value by the quality of the spouse God had stuck her with. Today she measures it by the quality of the Christ God raised for her.

Will she grovel now to Chuza? I don't think so. Though I also suspect that she spends her days loving and serving her Lord by loving and serving the brute. He too, after all, is someone Jesus died for. It may be that "Oh, no!" is all her husband ever says about Jesus' resurrection. If so, it won't be for want of her own patient trying.