Holy Week, Tuesday: Cleansing the Temple

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When Solomon dedicated the Temple he rightly declared that not even the Heaven of Heavens could contain almighty God, much less this temple made with hands, yet God himself still came into the temple. He came as a baby, the essence of all light and purity in human flesh, he came as a young boy full of questions, seeking to know his father’s will, and today he came in righteous anger to clear away the blasphemous barriers that human power-games try to throw up between God and the world he loves. Then finally, by his death on the cross he took away the last barrier in the Temple, and in our hearts, the veil that stood between us and the Holy of Holies, the very presence of God, in us and beyond us.

But these outward events are also inward ones. We cannot go out to the outer edifice of church or cathedral this week, but we can certainly invite Christ to come in to us, and that is what I do in this sonnet, with its fourfold cry for Christ to come into the temple of my heart.

This sonnet, and the others I will be posting for Holy Week are all drawn from my collection Sounding the Seasons.

You can hear me read the poem by clicking on the title:

Cleansing the Temple

Come to your Temple here with liberation

And overturn these tables of exchange

Restore in me my lost imagination

Begin in me for good, the pure change.

Come as you came, an infant with your mother,

That innocence may cleanse and claim this ground

Come as you came, a boy who sought his father

With questions asked and certain answers found,

Come as you came this day, a man in anger

Unleash the lash that drives a pathway through

Face down for me the fear the shame the danger

Teach me again to whom my love is due.

Break down in me the barricades of death

And tear the veil in two with your last breath.

Republished with gracious permission from Malcolm Guite’s website.

This essay was first published here in April 2022.

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The featured image is “Christ Expelling the Money Changers from the Temple” (between circa 1660 and circa 1669) by Salvator Rosa, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. It has been brightened for clarity.

Malcolm Guite, a poet, theologian, and songwriter, is Life Fellow, and former Chaplain, of Girton College (Cambridge) where he also teaches for the Divinity Faculty. He lectures widely in England and North America on theology and literature. Revd. Dr. Guite has published poetry, theology, and literary criticism, and worked as a librettist. His books include Word in the Wilderness, Faith, Hope and Poetry: Theology and the Poetic Imagination, and Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge.