Finding the Treasure

Spiritus Christi

July 26, 2020

Father Jim

If you lived in Rochester 20 years ago, you might remember the headlines in the Democrat and Chronicle:  “Excommunicated!”  And, Jim Smith, I remember you said, “I didn’t think the newspaper had letters that big?!”  Excommunicated!  And beneath the headlines was a picture of me.  I always remember this young woman photographer.  She took 70, 80, 90 pictures of me.  She was trying to wipe the smile off my face.   I knew what she was up to.  I was suppose to look forlorn, depressed because I was excommunicated.  But, do you know how hard it is to keep a smile on your face for 20 minutes?   She wore me down just a little bit but there was a little smirk  on my face the next morning in the paper.  I never had the full words for that to explain it.  Until John Lewis died.  The great civil rights leader who just died recently.     Mr. Lewis was arrested 40 times.  He said, “Every time I was arrested I made sure I had a smile on my face.”  He said, “I smile because I knew I was on the right side of history.”

You are always on the right side of history when you are struggling for racial justice.  You are always on the right side of history when you work for women’s equality. You are always on the right side of history when you work for LBGTQ equality.

Jesus says today, “The Kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in a field.”  John Lewis was an absolute treasure.  I got to hear him in person four years ago when he came to Rochester.   He said he had wanted to be a preacher when he was young.  His parents were sharecroppers down south and on the farm John’s job was to feed the chickens.  When he was ten years old he practiced being a preacher.  He would say to the chickens, “Let us pray!” And the chickens all bowed their heads.  He said,  “They listened to me better than all the members of Congress in the next 30 years.”

When he was arrested for a sit-in in Nashville his parents were very upset.  They said don’t get in to trouble like this.  But John said, “I learned from Jesus.”  He was a deeply spiritual man.  He said, “I learned from Jesus that you had to get in to trouble. He called it good trouble.  Necessary trouble.  When you see something that is unjust and wrong, you have to do something about it.  You have to say something about it even if it gets you in trouble.”

When he led the march for voting rights in Selma in 1965, he and other black marchers were savagely beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Our race convoy from Spiritus Christi visited that bridge a couple years ago. They called it Bloody Sunday.  State Police knocked Lewis, the leader, to the ground unconscious and he had a concussion.  Sister Barbara Lum and other sisters of St. Joseph saved his life.  They came out and got him and brought him to the hospital that they ran, which was the Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma.  When John Lewis was in Rochester four years ago, he paid a visit to those nuns out at the Mother House to thank them for saving his life.  Lewis told us on that occasion, “You white people may have come from Europe on a boat and we black people came from Africa on a slave boat.  But we are all in the same boat now and we have to learn to love each other and work with each other.”  He was a gentle soul and an apostle of nonviolence.  A man of deep faith.  John Lewis was a real treasure.

Another treasure in my life is my oldest brother, Phil.  He died three days ago.  He was 84 years old.  When he was young, like John Lewis, he wanted to enter the ministry. So he went to St. Andrews Seminary, but the Seminary threw him out because he flunked Greek and Latin.  Really important things today, right?

But he found a different way to live out his calling.  He married Eileen O’Meara and the two of them raised five extraordinary children.  Eileen and other family members still come to Spiritus Christi. 

Phil worked at Kodak for 32 years but then he took an early retirement package.  It seemed like the last 30 years he returned to his priestly calling. He spent many nights in the homeless shelter at St. Bridget’s Church.  He tutored special needs kids at Hope Hall.  He tutored kids at School 58 on University Avenue and School 44 on Chili Avenue.  He supported Isaiah House and Dimitri House.  He drove a school bus for the Greece Central School District for ten years.  As a bus driver Phil was like a pastor to those kids.  He knew all their names and knew everything about them.  Asked them about how they did on their math exam, their English exam.  And he was also a very good disciplinarian.  One time on the bus a kid used the “F” word.  Phil looked up in the mirror and he said, “You used the wrong word.”  The response was to “Go F yourself.”  So Phil keeps driving and it got time for the kid to get off the bus and Phil passed up his house.   The kid says, “Hey man!  That’s my house.”  Phil said, “I know.”  The kid said, “I have to go home.”  Phil told him that he would get home but that he was not going to take him home.  Phil kept on driving, let’s everybody off except for this one kid and drives the kid in to the Greece Police Station.  Calls up the police and asks for a policeman to escort this child to his house.

Another time two kids got in to a fight on the way to school.  So Phil let everybody else off except these two kids.  He called the Principal of the school and told him he was needed to come out to the bus and the kids needed to be escorted to his office.

Another time Phil drove right up somebody’s driveway in the school bus.  Put on the flashers and this guy comes running out and asks, “You’ve got some problems here?”  Phil responded that, “No we don’t have problems.  Just one problem.  That’s your son.”  Well.  He never had problems again with any of these kids.  They loved him and he loved them.  Phil was a real treasure.

Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in a field.”  A field.  I live on Copeland Street and next to me is a vacant lot.  There was a house there but it was torn down and grass was put in there.  Kids come and play.  The football is always coming in to my yard.  We get to talk.  A couple days ago there was an eight year old out there playing and I said, “You like this place, don’t you?”  He said, “ We love this place. “  I asked if the had a name for it and he responded, “Yes.  We call it our field.”  Our field is 50 feet by 100 feet but to an eight year old, that’s a field.

Jesus says, “God is a treasure, hiding in the field.”  The extraordinary is hiding in the ordinary.  The Divine is hiding in nature.  The treasure is found in nature in a field.  We learn about God through the Bible through church but we learn about God through nature.  Nature was the first Bible. Before the Bible was written.  All nature is sacred. It is a window in to the Divine.  Most people experience God in nature.  Maybe you are out doors right now.   God isn’t restricted to monks or ordained specialists.  We are all born mystics.  Our hearts thrusts for beauty and wonder and awe.  If you enjoy a sunset, if you enjoy the softness of a baby’s face you can’t authentically call yourself an atheist because beauty is another name for God.

I did some traveling this summer.  Made it half way across my backyard.  I was out in my backyard this morning and I thought of the poet, Rumi.  He said, “The morning breeze has secrets to tell you, don’t go back to sleep.”  Despite the city lights every night I can see the big dipper and the North Star and have you noticed Jupiter and Saturn in the southern sky?  Watch that tonight. Those two big planets every night. 

God is all around us.  Hiding in nature.  Nature is intoxicated with Divinity.

Young people are leading us today.  Greta Thunberg is addressing the climate emergency.  Malala from Pakistan is urging impoverished girls to get educated. High school students in Parkland, Florida are taking on the NRA. Young people are leading the Black Lives Matter movement.   Young people are teaching us older people about spirituality. 

Many young couples don’t want to get married in church these days.  They want to get married out in the vineyard, out in a meadow.  Young Jews don’t want to come to the Temple; they wan to observe Sabbath by hiking with their friends.  So instead of asking, how do we get these kids back to church, or back to the Synagogue?  Maybe we should ask:  Where do they presently find their spirituality? What are they trying to teach us?  What are they teaching us about where to find God in nature?

One time I was on a panel at the Quakers Meeting House.  The topic was religion and the LBGTQ community.  There was a Rabi, an Imam, a Pentecostal Pastor and myself on the panel.  The Pentecostal Pastor said that he was against gay marriage and he holds up the Bible and he says, “If it ain’t in the Bible then it ain’t permitted.”  And then they asked what I thought.  “I said that actually we have a little different take on that.  As Catholics we believe that, yes, the Bible is a source of revelation but it is not the only one. For us there are five sources of revelation. The Bible, which is very important. Another source is tradition. Another source is nature.  Another one is science and the fifth one is people’s lived experience.  The common sense of people.  So the Holy Spirit works through all of these sources.  Bible, tradition, nature, science and people’s common sense.

Science is so important in our understanding of God.  A lot of people today are ignoring science or discrediting it.  They think that their opinions are more important than scientific facts.  But a mistake about creation results in a mistake about God.  If we get it wrong about nature, we get it wrong about God.  We have made plenty of mistakes about nature. We have said that homosexuality is contrary to nature.  But scientists have discovered that at least 464 other species incorporate homosexual populations.  We made the mistake of saying one race is superior to all the other races.  But scientists have proved that those differences are only superficial.

We have said that the earth is flat, that the sun revolves around the earth.  That men are naturally born to rule a woman.  That men are active and that women are passive.  We said that diseases are God’s punishment for sin. But science has overturned all these misconceptions. It is so important.  Science is so important for us because a mistake about creation results in a mistake about God.   If we get it wrong about nature. We get it wrong about God. So without science we make the mistake of thinking that God is homophobic, God is misogynistic, or racist or an old white man with a beard or God is a punitive judge or a shame dispenser.  That’s why scientists are so important to us.  They help us seek the truth.  Another name for God.  The truth.

We also need science to save us from the Coronavirus.  And to alert us to the great glaciers melting.  That seas are rising.  Forrest fires are multiplying and polar bears are disappearing.  Scientists are like the Jewish prophets of old.  They are warning us so that we can change before it is too late.

Jesus says that, “The treasure in the field is hidden.”  It’s hidden.  God’s dream for the new world is something that you have to look for.  Something that you have to find.  Some people never do find it. They think that the world is just a miserable, crime-ridden valley of tears and everybody is doomed to a terrible life.  They think the world is a big jungle. Everybody is out there for themselves. 

People like my brother Phil. People like John Lewis; they discovered the treasure in the field.  They discovered God’s hidden project for the world.  God’s dream to transform the world in to a world of justice and equality.  Which Jesus called the Kingdom of God.

That’s why my brother, Phil, tutored kids. To overcome poverty and ignorance and racism. That’s why John Lewis spent his life working for civil rights.  Because he believed in a new world, God’s dream of racial equality.  Where diverse people live together in harmony.  Nobody could take John Lewis’ optimism away from him.  He was always optimistic.  Jesus says today, “You will discover joy when you find that treasure.”  That’s why every time he was arrested John Lewis had a smile on his face.  He knew he was on the right side of history.  He had found the treasure.