Our readings this week are 1 John 2:26-29 an Matthew 13.24–30, 36–43.

I have a confession to make. At this point in my life, I am at heart a universalist. That is to say, I choose to believe that every human being that has ever lived, that is living, or that will live, is destined for an eternity in heaven with God.

That may not sit comfortably with all of you, because it does not sit comfortably with strong streams of our inherited tradition, nor certain passages of Scripture. For example, the one that we have in front of us this week: Jesus' explanation of his parable of the weeds. How can I square this way of thinking and of feeling with Jesus saying that there will be a blazing furnace in which there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, and into which will be cast everything that causes sin and all who do evil?

It’s a very good question, and it's one that causes me some discomfort. First, I want to say that I believe that this sort of discomfort is healthy. If we are so certain in what we believe that we cannot be challenged in it, we are standing in a dangerous place. We are standing in a place of dangerous fragility in our beliefs. We need to be open to discussion, to other ways of thinking, to other ways of seeing, and we need to carry the humility that recognizes we may not be right.

But that image of eternal torment that appears in our minds - influenced by the artwork, by the theology of the Middle Ages - that arises from passages like this one, I find sits heavily at odds with the notion that we find in St. John's letters, for example, that God is love.

I cannot reconcile the thought that a God who is love, that creates in love, that wants the best for his entire creation through love, that is willing himself to suffer and to die to demonstrate that love and to reconcile his creation back to himself, could possibly want even a single individual to be in eternal torment - to be punished forever, and ever. And ever, and ever. And ever.

That, to me, is not the action of a loving God. It could perhaps be the action of a loving and powerless God; but I also believe that our God is infinitely powerful, that it is his will that shapes and forms the universe, that creates it in every single moment. So, if his will is the best for his children, if one single soul ends up in hell for eternity, then his will has failed. God does not, in that reality, get what he wants, and I can't believe that that is possible. I hold instead to the belief that, at the end of the day, Love wins.

The difficulty is compounded by the fact that we are so very rarely, if ever, truly free to choose how we act. In the same way that the weeds scattered in the parable had no choice about the sort of plant they would grow up to be, so it's true that we have, in many ways, so little choice in the sorts of people that we will grow up to be.

It's easy to imagine we have that freedom sitting in a position of majority privilege, but that fiction is part of the privilege!

I'm a well-educated, white, middle-class man on a reasonable income living in Britain in the 21st century. When it comes to being honest, generous and loving my situation makes it as easy as it is ever going to be. I could not be more privileged. But I'm very aware that I could have been born into an abusive family. I could have been a victim of poverty. I may have been a refugee from a war zone. I may have been living in a place of prejudice against me that limits my capacity to integrate with society around me. All of these things would perhaps lead me to do unrighteous things, might be causes of sin, in Jesus' words. I could have been forced to break laws – civil or divine - for the safety of my family, or to feed them.

I think it is that double recognition - that my thinking in the first place could be wrong, but also that, at various points in my life, despite the privilege that I've experienced, I've still managed to mess things up because of the presence of the causes of sin - that leads me to a place where this parable begins, perhaps, to make sense again.

What if the weeds and the wheat aren't different people, but different parts of the same person's life? Then perhaps, in this judgment at the end, there is hope. There is hope that one day we will be cleansed of those parts of ourselves that have gone so badly wrong.

When I look back over the moments where I haven't behaved as though I were abiding in Christ, where I have harmed other people through action or inaction, or where I've been forced to make unjust decisions because of the constraints of our economic and social systems, I can look at this parable and be reminded that Christ has promised me that one day things will be different. I am reminded that the person that I was in those moments of failure, who fell short of the desires and intentions of God - and hurt those around him - that person will get what he deserves: he, like the pain he caused, will be incinerated. My failures will be burned away, so I will be saved, but like a person escaping from a fire.

Then the person that I was in the moments when I get things right, and ultimately the person I will become as I stand before the throne of judgement, will be the people I have been that have managed – against the odds – to express righteousness. Then, by his grace, I might shine like the sun in the kingdom of my Father.

So I don't read this as a parable of judgment as condemnation. I read it as a parable of a judgement that carries the promise of cleansing; of the fire that burns away the dross to leave the gold. That invites me not to mourn over my failings, but to rejoice in all that is good.

Of course, that doesn't rob me of moral obligation. It doesn't mean that what I've done hasn't mattered, that it hasn't hurt other people, that it hasn't added to the burden that Christ bore on the cross; but it might mean that God’s love is stronger than our capacity to destroy each other, and that even the deepest wounds can be healed in His presence

For me now it means that as I step forward from this moment, in recognition of that grace that is offered to me, in the love that is lavished upon me by my Father, my intention will be to continue to abide in him out of gratitude, and not out of fear. The results may look the same, but knowing that I have been saved encourages me to live the kind of life that he would want me in loving response to the grace that has saved me, not out of fear that I might be damned. That, I believe, makes it better, more full of the good.

So my encouragement to you this week is to step out in love, to step out in gratitude for your Father's love for you, and to live in a way that brings glory to him and makes his kingdom – and all he has done for you - manifest upon the earth. Go, be a seed that grows in grace, and bears good fruit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. There is no law against such things!