Jesus travels with a group of women, both single and married, some of whom have extremely sketchy pasts — and these women financially support Him and the apostles. You don't need to know too much about human nature to say that such a situation is not exactly kosher. You don't need me to tell you that if a visiting preacher comes to this church accompanied by a suite of female followers, some of them married women traveling without their husbands, all of them bankrolling his lifestyle, he will be ridden out of here on a rail. And rightly so. We do not accept or allow this kind of thing in our church, for very good reasons. So why on earth does Luke record it for us here? You can't say he mentions it because it happened. Sure it happened. But Matthew, Mark, and John found a way to leave it out. I'm emphasizing the bizarre, seemingly non-kosher nature of this passage, a passage which raises more questions even last week's sinful city woman, because I want to make you really look at the text. What is Luke saying? Obviously he is not hinting that Jesus and the apostles are doing anything inappropriate. He is not suggesting that Jesus was an early version of Joseph Smith, or a late version of Solomon. Clearly that's not why Luke puts this summary here. Though from one perspective this is a giant red flag, almost as big as Judas' betrayal, from another perspective, this story reinforces our confidence in Jesus. It strengthens our faith when we understand what's really going on, which is this: those who have been transformed by Jesus remain with Him in ministry.