Today's readings: Exodus 3, 1-8.13-15; 1 Corinthians 10, 1-6.10-12; Luke 13, 1-9.
The cosmic drama between God and evil has always been problematic for the ancient mythologies and the great world religions alike. The Gospel today invites us not to opt for superficial explanations or solutions. Christianity should seek to be neither a tranquilliser nor geometrical.
Christianity is meant to be a paradox. This has always been intuited by free spirits in Church history such as Origen and Luther, John of the Cross and Pascal, Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky. We cannot afford to dismiss lightly the spiritual perplexity that evil and suffering provokes. We also need the courage and freedom to remain open to revisions in our thinking about God which need not always be in line with the theology normally accredited in the Church.
The strength of our belief stands or falls with our perception of God. The repentance called for during Lent is not simply a turning away from sin but a turning towards God. But to turn to God we need to "take off our shoes", as Moses had to do to enter a space that was sacred. There is too much that makes us feel some resentment towards God. Faith often risks foundering on the rocks of empirical horrors too vast to be reconciled with any belief, let alone with a God of justice and mercy.
Moses was not someone in search of God. It was God who was in search of him. The symbol of the burning bush which is not burnt speaks loudly of God's presence that never fades. Yet Moses had difficulty about what to report back to whoever might ask him about his God.
In the Gospel, this same difficulty is brought out in the context of the queries provoked by death in the city and the imagery of the fig tree bearing no fruit. The world demands explanations which many times we cannot give. Yet the reason for our belief, if deepened, can shed light and lead to some understanding. Certainty about God transpires only from His manifestation, which can even happen in the depths of our hearts.
Action needs to follow words. That is the significance of the parable of the fig tree. Otherwise our credibility and that of the Gospel itself are at risk. "I have seen the miserable state of my people", the Lord said to Moses in the first reading. How is our faith affected by the misery surrounding us? How is our faith affecting the misery?
Speaking of God in our social, political, cultural and religious contexts seems to be part of the problem, not of the solution. Ours is an era which really has difficulty to speak about God. Meister Eckhardt wrote that "the best one can say about God is to be silent". Peter Rollins, an emerging theologian who grew up in Belfast, in his recent book How (Not) to Speak of God, writes: "Instead of viewing the unspeakable as that which brings all language to a halt, the Christian mystics realised that the unspeakable was precisely the place where the most inspiring language began".
He speaks in his book about his experience of Christianity in one of its more dysfunctional western forms. For him, speaking of God in Northern Ireland has too often fomented distrust and prejudice, not peace and reconciliation. Our theologies, even our understanding of spirituality, consisted many a time of dos and don'ts, without responding to existential anguish.
This is why for the western Church to prosper in the 21st century, it needs to engage with the language of the mystics. They convey a sense of emptiness that appeals to the absence of religious meaning that we often experience. God is never possessed, He escapes our certainties. God, as is shown in today's reading from Exodus, is always a burning fire that is never consumed. Wrestling with God, we need to learn how to give in, to submit in love.