Autumn had arrived in the Hundred Acre Wood.  Leaves were falling from the trees like a coloured blanket – reds, yellows, oranges, greens and browns, twirling round and dancing as they fell at Winnie The Pooh’s feet.  He kicked them up and watched them rise and fall again.  Piglet cling firmly on to Pooh, trying to keep his own feet on the ground.  He didn’t want to become a leaf twirling in the breeze, swept up goodness knows where. 
‘It must be fun to be a leaf’, said Pooh, thoughtfully for a bear of little brain, ‘floating in the air, carried here there and anywhere, without a care’.  I think I’ll hum a leafy song. 
‘But P-P-P-Pooh’ said Piglet, a little nervously  ‘I d-d-d-don’t think I w-w-w-want to be one of these leaves – they’re d-d-d-d-dead leaves’. 
Pooh thought and then he stopped as he bumped into a grey something that the leaves had covered over.
‘They’re just making a mess and getting in the way of people if you ask me’, said Eeyore. 
‘But why?’ asked Piglet, gaining confidence. 
‘Why what?’ said Pooh and Eeyore. 
‘w-w-why are they dying and falling to the ground?’  said Piglet. 
‘There’s  a very good reason for that’, said Pooh.  ‘Let’s go and ask Owl, he’ll know’.
So they set off, kicking their way through the piles of colour and found Owl in his rocking chair on a ledge just outside his house, being rocked furiously by the breeze. 
‘Owl’, said Pooh, ‘you are wise and know everything, Piglet wants to know why the leaves are dying and falling to the ground.  It’s not right’.  Owl stretched out his wings and put the tips together wisely. 
‘Of course it’s right’, Owl said, ‘that’s what leaves do.  They die.  Live and die. That’s all there is to it’.  They were made to die’.  And Owl closed his eyes and rocked a bit harder in his chair.

Is Owl right?  Is that all there is to our lives?  Like the leaves, we are made to die?  Of course the leaves on the trees serve a purpose, they keep each tree alive by osmosis and in winter deciduous trees have a rest and don’t need their leaves so they shed them.  And as we walk through the woods in autumn or look at the trees out of our windows and admire the colours, we can’t help but think about the cycle of life – the leaves do fall and remind us of the fragility of our own lives – we are, as we heard in our first reading, like grass, flourishing for a while and then gone.  In a sense we know that the only certainty in life is that death will come to all of us and so we need to make sense of it.

As the leaves fall there is beauty and their fall is part of the whole process of nature, we heard also in the reading that the God who made nature and all around us does not die, is unchanging and eternal.  He is there for us.  And he had designed the natural world such that it is self supporting and keeps going.  So not only do leaves fall from the trees but seeds do too. And the seeds replenish life and keep it going.  In the reading from John’s gospel we heard Jesus talk about the wheat seeds which must be buried in the ground in order to bring forth any fruit or grain.  They may look nice as ears of corn but unless they are sown as seed then they are useless.  Their own life is limited but they give life to other plants.

And that is true of all people too.  Each of us has a purpose in life – not necessarily vast and spectacular – often simple and centred on our own families.  Once our purpose has been achieved God calls us on and like the leaves we fall to the ground.  I think that if Owl had not closed his eyes and ended the conversation Piglet would have liked to ask him more – like, what about us, are we like the leaves?  And I imagine that Piglet would have said, well what is dying?

I don’t know what Owl would answer but I do know that as Christians we believe that it is not an end but a moving on to the next part of life, the eternal life which God offers to us in Jesus.  And a leaving behind something of ourselves perhaps in physical form in our family or in a less tangible way in our example and our influence and what we give to others.  In a way it is easier for the dying person to let go and to be with God.  It is far more difficult to be left and to have to let go – while hanging on to the memories and treasuring the fruits that they bear.

This evening we have come to remember those leaves in our life, the grains of wheat, that over the last year we have had to let go of, have seen fall to the ground.  We are like Piglets – perhaps a bit confused, upset certainly, feeling that in some way what has happened is not right.  And yet it is a part of life and we cannot change that.  So we need to find a positive from what seems negative – and to look to the fruit of those whom we have lost.  And that is not easy.

Not long ago I read Sheila Hancock’s book, ‘The two of us – my life with John Thaw’.  It is written in an interesting way and she writes movingly of her loss in diary form.  This is what she says the day after John died.  It does have a couple of rather rude words in and I apologise for reading it as it stands:

"26 February
Woke up after a few hours' sleep and realised it was still true.  Girls phoned to say they are coming to get me, but I am not fit to face anyone.  Thousands of letters.  I know these people are actually hurting, but oh God what I'm feeling is beyond comfort.  Nothing helps.  Especially that 'Death is nothing at all' bollocks.  Oh really ?  And no, he isn't in the sodding next room.  The thoughtful strangers say it will help me but it makes me roar with rage.  OK, you say I'll meet him again.  Prove it.  I would like to believe it, God would I like to.  If I thought it was true I'd kill myself and meet him now.  I have absolutely no sense of his presence.  He is utterly gone and I can't bear it."

The sad thing to my mind is in that last sentence: he is utterly gone because I cannot accept that anyone is utterly gone.  Like the leaves and the seeds and the grain – there is beauty and good left behind for us to remember and to glean. 

The church has made a big thing of this with some really special people – we call them Saints and we make stained glass windows of them and we tell their stories and we all say of I wish I could be like St Francis of Assisi - well, I’m not sure I’d like to stand with my arms stuck out and have birds resting on them.  We have lost the real person and made them so special we can’t reach them or attain to their qualities.  On Tuesday the church will celebrate the feast day of All Saints and we will remember what they did and the fruit of their lives.  But the next day, 2^nd November, is All Souls' day and that means much more to me.  On All Souls' day we recall ALL those who have died and the qualities that they have left us – the fruit of their lives.  And we give thanks for them.

I’d like to share with you just three who are special to me and who I will be thinking of on Wednesday.  My paternal grandfather died over 30 years ago when I was just 13, but I remember him very clearly and he has influenced me in the way I try to live and in what I have done with my life.  He started his teaching career here in Epping, just over the road, he was married on this church and he lived the Christian life in a simple unassuming way.  At his funeral I recall the minister saying, ‘I have never heard Bob speak a bad word about anyone’ and to my knowledge that was true.  How I would like to be able to live up to that example. 

Dr Tim Whitney taught me A Level RE.  He was a highly intelligent man who had an appalling taste in ties (our lessons were taken up in discussion of this) and an incredible zeal for life.  He smuggled Bibles into Romania as a student and ran a number of study trips to the Holy Land.  He and his wife opened their home to difficult teenagers and prayed for them.  He had muscular dystrophy and died in his early 40s having influenced hundreds of young people with his faith in God and humour at life.

And I shall be invidious and mention one person from the list of names to be read out tonight.  Ruth Youngs also had a wonderful sense of humour and a real zest for life – a life which in her childhood had been very difficult.  At 91 she retained a trusting faith in her God and an honesty which many of us at Theydon Garnon might seek to emulate.  Her fruit lives on not just in her family but in the beautiful pictures which she painted. 

They are just three of the saints with a little 's' which will be remembered next week.  You have each come tonight with your own saint in mind.  With your own memories and treasures and fruit.  Our loved ones are beautiful leaves that have fallen to the ground but like the wheat grain they leave behind fruit for us to reap.  It is not easy to deal with death.  It hurts.  Memories can be painful.  But we can we assured that God knows about our pain and will strengthen us if we ask – the words of the hymn we will sing in a moment remind us of that – tower and temple fall to dust – but God’s power, hour by hour, is our temple and our tower.

Tonight we can be like Piglet and ask why the leaves have fallen or we can be like Owl and accept that this is part of life.  In a while you will be invited to light a candle as a memorial of your loved one.  As you do so you may like to think of all the fruit that he or she has left for you to enjoy – and perhaps we should also to think about ourselves and ask what fruit we will bear when it is our time to fall.

Amen.