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(Former Virginia baseball player Barry Hollar, whose last appearance on roanoke.com provided some insight into Bruce Springsteen's history in Charlottesville, shares the text from the homily he gave at the funeral of ex-UVa coach and administrator James O. "Jim" West)

Twice in my life Jim West, Coach West, honored me in ways I will never forget.

The first time was on a baseball field, Davenport Field, over 30 years ago.  Many of you remember well how Jim argued with an umpire.  If he was really serious about it, he would throw his hat on the ground.

I use to think it was kind of comical until one day he threw his hat on the ground for me.  He had come to the mound to chastise me for letting my emotions affect me as I reacted to what I thought were unfair calls from an umpire.  My catcher, Danny Bernstein, quickly rose to my defense.  “Coach, I’m putting up my mitt and he’s hitting the target and the ump is calling it a ball.”

The unfortunate umpire arrived at the mound to break up our conference at that moment.  Jim turned to him, threw down his hat, and unleashed all the rich and colorful vocabulary he had learned on baseball fields across Virginia over the years.

I was so honored!  Coach had thrown down his hat for me.

But I was even more deeply honored a little over a year ago when he pulled me aside at a picnic at Graves Mountain Lodge and said, “Barry, I’d like you to do my funeral.  I’d like to have someone do it who knows me a little bit.”

There could be no deeper honor for a pastor.

I have come to realize in the days since his death how little really I did know him.  I knew him as a coach, of course.  I knew that he thought I ought to throw more strikes and get ahead of hitters.  I knew that if we lost three in a row we were going to all have to get shorter haircuts.  I knew how much he loved to beat Hokies and the Tar Heels.  (Does anyone but me suspect that he had something to do with that 10-run inning the other day against the Tar Heels?

Finally being in a position to actually make ground balls find their way through the infield.  Or pop flies find a safe place to land?)

But I really didn’t know as much as I should have about how important he was to the athletic department at Virginia, or what a source of joy and comfort and faithfulness he was to people like Joe Gieck, and Doc McCue, and Larry Dofflemyer and Mike Sheffield and others I’m sure.  I didn’t know important he was to his family and his family to him.

I’m not going to say anymore about any of that because there are others here to do that but I do want to comment on one thing I learned about Coach West this week:  he apparently had a nearly irrational fear of snakes.

He was certainly not alone in that, was he?  I imagine that many of us are members of that club!

Some would say that the widespread fear of snakes among us has to do with the role played by the serpent in the biblical story about the entrance of evil, sin, suffering, and death into our human reality.

Our fear of snakes, some would say, is symbolic of our fear of these deeper realities that mark our lives so indelibly.   We are surely marked by their reality today as we gather in this place to remember Jim.

The good news of the gospel is, however, that while evil, sin, suffering, and death are real; they are not to be feared.  The good news is that the One who calls all that is into being, the One who breathes life in us, the One who moves the sun and moon and stars is love.

The good news of the gospel is that while evil, sin, suffering, and death are real, by the power God they shall not have the last say.  Indeed, their ultimate defeat has already been accomplished.

The good news of the gospel is that nothing shall ultimately separate us from God.

The challenge of the gospel for us is that we allow God’s all-encompassing, compassionate, self-giving love permeate our heart and soul and mind and strength; that in all our ways we should be love as God is love.

Jim was not perfect.  Who among us is?  Jim had his flaws, as do you and I.   Our sin, at its core is a rejection of God and God’s perfect love.  But God does not let our rejection determine the day.   God’s love for us, God’s desire for fellowship and friendship with us is relentless.  God’s will for us is joy, and peace, and justice, and life.  And God’s will prevails even in the face of death.

When Jim asked me to do his funeral over a year ago I did not sense any fear or dread in him.  He was not desperate or frightened or anxious.  He seemed like a man who was looking honestly into the future and making necessary preparations for what he foresaw was coming, more quickly than he wished, more quickly than any of us anticipated or wished for.

In talking to Mike, Jim’s son-in-law, on Saturday, I learned that Jim had been preparing for this day in other ways.  He was taking care of practical matters, financial matters, in preparation for this day—as in his conversation with me, a man calmly and courageously and honestly facing the reality of his own physical demise.

Mike Sheffield said something to me on Saturday that might make sense of his calm and courageous demeanor in the face of a reality that might drive many of us into denial or panic.   Mike said to me that several times in recent years Jim had commented to him about one important matter or another, “You know, Mike, none of this is really in our hands,” indicating an attitude of trusting faith in One in whose hands all things, all our lives and all our future, is lovingly and carefully nurtured.

Jim could face his own demise with such calm and practical resolution because in some deep and abiding way he knew that in life, in death, and life beyond death we are in God’s powerful, loving hands.   All that we have and all that we are in is the care of the One who is love.   And nothing shall separate us from that love.

Thanks be to God.

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