Careful discernment of the Gospel readings during Lent can bring guidance and inspiration to pupils and teachers alike that has repercussions beyond their school environment and beyond the season

Lent offers endless lessons in paradox. The Lenten Scripture readings can sometimes be hard to interpret, and yet, on another level, they are very simple: trust in God, serve, forgive, love and be merciful just as God is merciful. There is some consolation in that the disciples also seemed to have had a hard time fully understanding the message of Jesus.

Two readings are particularly instructive. In the Gospel reading for the Third Sunday in Lent (John 4: 5-42) Jesus, tired and thirsty, sitting at noon at Jacob’s well in the Samaritan city of Sychar, encounters a Samaritan woman, and asks her to give him a drink.

The Samaritan woman represents the consummate “outsider”. The fact that she was using the well at noon, when the sun was at its hottest, suggests that others would not let her use the well at the same time as them. But then she meets Jesus, who turns her rejection on its head; and, after her encounter with Jesus, she becomes not only an “insider” but also a leader, publicly proclaiming Jesus the Messiah to both men and women in her village.