International Women’s Day 8th March 2026
It’s 7am, and I’m on a walk. A cold mist is soaking through my t-shirt. Despite this, my attention is taken up by the Sermon of the Week from Bethel Church, Redding.
The title is Love Looks Like Action, and the speaker is Gabe Valenzuela.
At this point, I have no idea it is International Women’s Day. I don’t find out until after I’m back home, showered, and listening to R4 getting my standard cuppa and cereal breakfast organised.
I’m drawn into the talk. Gabe is combining serious points with disarming humour. Sometimes I’m laughing, hoping no one’s too close to wonder why this man walking along the Strawberry Line path is laughing to himself, early in the morning.
His text is the familiar parable about the Good Samaritan. After about 30 minutes happily agreeing with his conclusions, I find myself taken off in an unexpected direction, unrelated to any sermons or commentaries on this parable, in which the punchline is ‘Go and do likewise’.
A new punchline? Not one that is written down, but one that came from the heart. Of course, Jesus can be thought of as the Samaritan, come to bind up our wounds and pay for our recovery. A beautiful picture of God’s love and grace. This is wonderful and true, but I saw something quite different.
Jesus could tell this parable because He also experienced being the man left by the wayside, battered, bruised, wounded and robbed. Yes, on the cross, but also in life.
As Gabe Valnzuela pointed out, we have all been the person beaten up at times.
Also true of Jesus. The question is, who was he thinking of who had shown him kindness and poured healing oil on Him?
First, though: the wounds.
1. Early childhood fleeing to Egypt as a child refugee, an outsider. Think of the hostility in our society, spoken or unspoken, towards refugees…in the school playground.
2. Biting, continual criticism and accusations from the Pharisees
3. Direct opposition and temptation from Satan and evil spirits
4. His own family accuses him of madness
5. Peter disowning him, Judas betraying him, the other apostles abandoning him
Throughout his public ministry and before he was ministered to, received kindness from, gentleness from, love from…women.
Martha and Mary, Mary Magdalene, Mary his mother, Joanna, Susannah, and Salome. In very different ways, they all ministered to him. Maybe you know how. But I want to mention one woman in particular, the Samaritan woman at the well. Maybe she was the inspiration for the parable? The story is related in John chapter 4.
Why this woman? In part because she is unnamed, and a Samaritan, considered to be unworthy. Not only that, but had lived such a tragic life, living with a man but not married, having previously had four husbands. And yet, when Jesus was weary, tired, incapable of taking another step, ground to a halt in the shade by a well…it was this woman who gave the Saviour a cold, refreshing drink of water, when he had no means of getting the water up from the well.
If you’re a man and reading this, perhaps you are thinking back over your life and how particular women have shown you kindness, gentleness, and love just when you needed it and, perhaps, when you least deserved it.
Even in anticipation of Jesus’s ultimate suffering, the indignity of betrayal, arrest, illegal trial, and undeserved execution on trumped-up charges leading to crucifixion, death and burial, it was women who knew what to do…and did it.
First, Mary, the sister of Lazarus, anoints Jesus's feet with very expensive perfume, filling the house with the scent. Jesus knows why. He says, ‘Leave her alone, she has kept this for the day of my burial’. An act of devotion and love, knowing that he would soon suffer and die.
And lastly, the women who went to the tomb with spices to roll the stone away and enter to anoint his dead body: Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and Salome are named.
Why this woman? In part because she is unnamed, and a Samaritan, considered to be unworthy
What do you think Jesus felt knowing these women had done all that even for him in death?
After all this came from nowhere and tumbled into my thoughts and made tears fall, I walked along the road back to my house, showered, and flipped on Radio 4.
The Morning Service. A programme I usually switch off, as it often feels too stiff and formal. But not this morning. It’s a service from Zion Temple Celebration Centre, in Rwanda, and the stories of, I think, five women in rich Rwandan accents are celebrating International Women’s Day and their faith and love for Christ and telling how He has transformed their lives and is at work today in His risen power, are being told.
That stopped me in my tracks. It’s one thing to be ambushed whilst listening to someone else’s sermon, quite another to be arrested by Radio 4.
So, yes... it’s not only worthwhile to celebrate International Women’s Day, but also important to remember and honour the women who ministered to the wounds Jesus received during His life and in His death…and to give thank God for this reality in our own lives. And not just to ‘give’ thanks, but to pour it out — just like Mary poured her ointment on Jesus’s feet.