Time and place are tools that help us understand the gospels. On our lenten journey, we are in Jerusalem with Jesus. From the 4th week of Lent, John’s gospel, describing what Jesus did in the Holy City, is the preferred source for our Mass readings on Sundays and weekdays before Easter.

Unlike the synoptic gospels which present him making a single journey to Jerusalem, John’s gospel indicates that Jesus went often to the Holy City, as one would expect. He’s more than a dutiful Jew visiting the temple to celebrate the Jewish feasts, though. He’s more than a simple Galilean peasant from Nazareth caught in a random attempt by the city’s leaders to squelch a possible revolution. In John’s gospel, he is the Word made flesh, the Savior of the world, replacing the temple and its worship; he’s God’s presence on earth. “I am.”

Going to Jerusalem to celebrate the feasts was essential for Jesus’ mission. During the Feast of Tabernacles, the Feast of the Dedication of the Temple, and the Feast of Passover he makes startling claims before the Jewish people and their leaders. The false witnesses who testify later at his trial before the Jewish Sanhedrin are not far from the real claim he made; he came, not to destroy the temple, but to be its replacement.

Jesus’ meeting with the Samaritan woman (3rd Sunday A), which John describes at length, takes place as he returns from Jerusalem after driving out the buyers and sellers from the temple during the feast of Passover. He is the purified temple and all will be drawn to him. The Samaritan woman and her neighbors who welcome him stand for all the outsiders called to worship “in spirit and in truth.”

The temple was the place where sin was forgiven. Today’s reading about the woman caught in adultery (Monday, 5th week) takes us to the temple area and reminds us that Jesus, the Lamb of God, takes away the sin of the world. He is a sign of God’s mercy to the woman standing before him, and to all of us. His forgiveness is far beyond the forgiveness of the scribes and pharisees who would stone the woman to death, according to the Law of Moses.

God’s forgiveness goes far beyond their forgiveness–and far beyond ours too.