Please join Dr. Will this Mother’s Day Sunday, May 12, 2024, as he preaches “Please, Give Her Credit! The uncomfortable encounter of Jesus and a woman at the Well from Exodus 17:1–7; John 4:5–42.

For long Christian fundamentalists have objectified the role of women. At some point in their history, they claimed that God solely assigned women to sexually satisfy their husbands. In most of those churches, women were and continue to be second-class Christians and banned from public ministry.

In our biblical text, this Sunday, an unknown woman breaks the stereotype and becomes the first evangelist in the Bible. Her encounter with Jesus would have made the headline of her time. She is a Samaritan woman and an outcast from the orthodox religious standard. she is immoral according to the ancient Jewish traditional law because she has exceeded more than three husbands. She is excluded by her society.

Yet she breaks all religious, racial, moral, and gender barriers and enters a conversation with Jesus. She gave Jesus a drink of water to quench his thirst. And Jesus gave her “living water”—his acceptance, inclusion, and love, which he meant for her to know as God’s acceptance, inclusion, and love.

Because of her, many Samaritans believed—and not only believed, but the people of that village invited that little band of 12 politically correct, morally pure, and theologically orthodox Jews to do the unthinkable: to stay with them. And they accepted. This unknown woman and through her all the women in our midst deserve a long overdue credit.

Rev. Dr. Willy L. Mafuta, Ph.D, Th.D