Fr. Ben’s homily for Tuesday of the 5th Week of Lent
Theme: FIERY SERPENTS AMONG THE PEOPLE…
By: Ben Agbo (Rev Fr)
Homily for Tuesday April 5 2022
*Num 21 : 4 – 9, Jn 8 : 21 – 30.
It has not stopped happening that when people become impatient on their way with God and speak against God and his servants, many bad things begin to happen to them; fiery serpents are unleashed among the people. It has not stopped happening that when people make negative confessions like the Israelites did in today’s 1st reading, God decides to abandon them. Can you just hear them: ‘There is no food and no water and we loathe this worthless food…’ Well it cannot be true that there is no food and at the same time there is worthless food…in the desert? No. Food is food and does the same job of sustaining life. Our problem is our attitude of negativity. We cannot say there is no job in Nigeria but we don’t like the few available ones like labourer or house jobs.
*I once saw a watsap video of a typical Nigerian big guy who went to America to make money only to discover that the only available job for him to do was to wash plates in a hotel. Lacking the requisite humility, he quarrelled with the madam in charge and ended up in the airport back to Nigeria the next day.
When the people prayed to God, Moses was told to make the image of a fiery serpent and set up as a sacramental and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it shall live. God does not contradict himself. He does not forbid the making of images in the 1st commandment (as many Protestants think, Ex 20 : 3) and at another occasion order Moses to make one. So, there can be holy images provided they are aids to God not distractions. Images are used as aids to prayers not as objects of worship, Wis 16 : 6. As the Israelites prayed to God through Moses, Christians still pray to God through the intercession of the blessed Virgin Mary and the Saints. Jesus is the only mediator between God and man but not the only intercessor, 1 Tim 2 : 5.
Jesus tells the Pharisees in today’s gospel: ‘I go away and you will seek me and die in your sins unless you believe… When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you will know that I am he…’ When Jesus is lifted up on the Cross, people will now look up to him as the Messiah. Even his executioners had to confess that he is the Son of God, Matt 27 : 54. When Jesus is lifted up, there would be so many signs and wonders performed among the people of God. When Jesus was lifted up from the grave, everything was fulfilled. The resurrection of Jesus is the greatest proof that he is the Messiah. After that the Holy Spirit was poured out on the disciples and Christianity was inaugurated. ‘We cannot understand Christ’ says Vima Dasan, ‘until we have understood his Cross’.
Today, many of our politicians, traditional rulers and the Youths are going back to resurrect the idols abandoned by our fathers in the name of cultural renaissance. In one of my forner Parishes, they have brought back the ‘Omabe masquerade’ already abandoned many years ago in preference for ‘Akatakpa masquerade’. My bishop, Most Rev Godfrey Onah will always insist that ‘Igoma abugu omenala’ (Idol worship can never be called traditional culture). While the elders are interested in the cultural dimensions, the youths are interested in the financial gains and sports involved and the wicked people are interested in protecting their occult/ evil foundations. In the final analysis why are we surprised that there are so many fiery serpents among the people; the Youths are getting poorer and poorer because of the evil effects of such hooliganistick cults of violence, the elders are getting sicker and dying in their middle ages, there are more young widows than married women among our CWO. Christ said ‘You will die in your sins unless you believe in me’. May God bless you today!
