Homily for the Funeral of Barret Seymour - John 14:1-7

I bet it wouldn’t take much effort for each of us to think of a perfect day. They are not hard to imagine. Maybe if I asked you, you could daydream pretty quickly and conjure up a perfect day, filled with you favorite activities and your favorite people. Or maybe you would recall a perfect day from memory, one day that you’ve had that surpasses all others. My own perfect day is a blend of the real and the imagined. The details could vary, but the day would most certainly include wine tasting in California. Some of my fondest memories are from days spent with friends in the Napa Valley. We had leisurely picnics on a blanket with a bottle of wine looking out over beautiful rolling hills. We sampled fine wines that far exceeded our graduate student budgets. Picture sunny skies with a gentle breeze, and not a care in the world, at least for an afternoon. If I were to add some daydreaming detail to those perfect days from my young adulthood, I would throw in meeting a handsome, single winemaker, getting married, and moving into a beautifully renovated farmhouse in a picturesque valley of the wine country. That plan didn’t quite work out in real life. But I digress. The point is that perfect days, either ones we have lived or ones we can imagine, are to be savored as one of life’s joys.

From what I know of Barret, his perfect days surely included wine tasting in California. But he could take it to a whole different level. He had a gift, something of an extraordinary palette and a remarkable nose. This brought him joy and good work during his years in the restaurant world. He could discern a hidden ingredient in a dish, like a dash of nutmeg. And he could tell you just about anything about wine, not only it’s level of quality but which microclimate the grapes were from and which winery likely produced it. I’m told that he worked in Napa for a time, until one day when he lost a job and was down on his luck. Neil drove out to get him. As they hit the road back to Arkansas, Neil realized that Barret had never seen the ocean. So they drove down to the central coast of California, God’s country to be exact, and went wine tasting. Barret engaged the winemakers on the finer points of their offerings, clearly impressive in his knowledge - but not in a pretentious or showy way that sometimes happens in places like that. He could talk shop on the technical side of winemaking with a level of knowledge far beyond the usual tourist. He was in his element, enjoying his brilliant giftedness. It was a perfect day.

Barret had fewer perfect days as the years went on, and eventually, he lost his way. This is particularly poignant for a man who could trace various paths so carefully, like a grape’s journey from one part of the valley to another. His family and friends responded to his struggles with love and worry, hopeful that he would find the healing that he needed. But sometimes, the very discerning and gifted can become the very lost. Well before last week’s accident, he had lost his joy and was deeply off course. And yet, what if that lostness does not have the last word on his life or his death, at least not in the big picture? That idea is the very heart of the Gospel.

At its core, the Christian message insists that when we lose our way, we are not ultimately lost. The grace of God finds us, and leads us to life after death. “Very truly, I tell you,” Jesus once said, “that anyone who hears my word… has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life.” From death to life are mysterious words. As we try to understand them today, I hear an emphasis on Jesus’ use of the word, “anyone.” Anyone can go from death to life - and anyone is you and me and Barret, too. This teaching is for all of us. Whatever struggles we have in this life, however we lose our way, we end up stumbling onto the path to eternal life.

And while we’re talking about eternal life, we should take Jesus at his word about not coming under judgment. In fact, there is a distinct lack of judgment when it comes to finding eternal life. Eternal life is not about us getting something right in this life, or earning our way into heaven for being good. Eternal life is offered through grace, which by definition, is not something we earn. Or even find on some hypothetical right path. It finds us. Jesus always had a particular fondness for the lost, from lost sheep to prodigal sons, and made a point of going after them. Perhaps it is in our lostness the most that the gospel breaks through to us.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus says that he is the way, and that we know the way already because we know him. There are times, of course, when we’re like Thomas in the scene, worried that we won’t know the way when our time comes, or that our loved one didn’t know the way. Jesus reassured him by saying that there is far less mystery involved than we might think. Jesus is the way, and the truth, and the life. He is the path to where we need to go, a path we already know on some deep level. “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” Jesus said. There is a place already prepared for each one of us.

These are comforting words in a time of loss. Barret knew the way, and now finds himself in his very own divine dwelling place. Whatever perfect days he knew in this life, whatever joy he had, whatever giftedness he possessed, he now enjoys fully. We don’t know what heaven looks like, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s rather close to a day of wine tasting on the central coast of California. Whatever heaven looks like, Barret is there, fully in his element, and no longer lost. His perfect day is now eternal, shared with the one who found him and showed him the way home.