your belly can be an idol - 5th week lent tuesday

Our first reading today from the book of numbers narrates to us the story of the bronze serpent.  It all started with the complaint regarding food.  The Israelites have been eating manna in their long journey in the desert so much so that they began to call manna as that wretched food.  For this they began crave for what commentators calls food of slavery – the meat, fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, garlic, grain, figs, grapes, and pomegranates which they once ate in the land of slavery in Egypt.  In the eyes of the prophets it was a kind of idolatry because now it is the belly that dictates the person, it is the belly that influences the decision, it is the belly that is followed.  In the letters of Paul for example we hear him remonstrating sinners saying “their god is their belly.  And in another letter he wrote, such men serve, not Christ our Lord, but their own bellies.

This is what happened on the Red Sea Road – their belly became their god for it was the belly that was listened to, it was the belly that directed and moved them to act, it was the belly that was followed.  The desire for food, their hunger makes the choice and makes the decision.  It is in this sense that the belly becomes an idol, it is an idolatry and for this God punished them by sending them serpents who bit them.

Many times we take this for granted but our bellies can become idols which dictate our actions and influence our choices.

People kill, people steal, people hoard because of hunger and the fear of it.  Ngaa puno puno gid ang pinggan nga daw sa nahadlok maubusan.  And the opposite is also true – if the belly does not like the food we throw this away.  Now we have so much waste.  The belly can become an idol. 

Nowadays everywhere you turn there is food – people who sell food, or restaurants – anywhere you turn  - walk a little further may tinangge, walk a little further may jolibee, walk a little bit further may Ted’s, walk a little bit further may Paa, walk a little bit further may biscocho house.  Eating has never been so convenient, eating has never been so available, you can eat anytime, anywhere.  You can quench a thirst and hunger at every craving – there is no need to wait, no need to postpone, no need to walk and look.  Then there is this other reality - so much food and yet so many who hunger.  Sang nagligad ang tanan may balunan tubig nga daw mapatay ka gid kon indi ka maka-inom immediately kay malakat ka pa pulo ka dupa.  Bisan sa chapel may dala tubi.  Dugay dugay nahimo na sia nga kape.  Bisan diin lang may kape.  Dugay-dugay bisan diin na lang makaon, ano pa bisan diin lang may ilaga.  Can we not put eating back to the refectory and the canteen?  Why do we have to immediately satisfy every longing, every thirst, every hunger immediately and wherever?

The belly can become an idol.  I think the punishment for this idolatry is not literally the snake but the symbolic snake which is equally fatal – diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure.  You are not yet priests and you are already obese.  And then since we have become obese we go on diet sometimes it goes to the extreme it becomes a narcissism ,  an excessive love for self and one’s body.

The belly can become an idol.