Some of you might remember a song which goes like this: ‘We all know that people are the same wherever you go, There is good and bad in everyone.

We learn to live when we learn to give each other

What we need to survive, together alive.’ (McCartney 1980)

There is good and bad in everyone. None of us is perfect. And so I find myself going around in circles when I ponder upon today’s readings. I like to think that as there is good in everyone, then all people will be counted as the righteous who will ‘shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father’, as we heard in last week’s parable. (Matthew 13:43)

But that isn’t what Jesus says in our gospel reading today. ‘The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ (Matthew 13:49, 50) If there is bad in everyone, this might equally apply to all people!

So where do we go from here? What is the Kingdom of Heaven? What is the furnace of fire? How can we shine some light on this?

Let’s make a few observations to take us forward in our thinking:

We all draw the line somewhere between what’s a bit naughty but acceptable, like white lies, and what is evil, like murder. Our lines vary as to their position, but we tend to keep to our own moral standards, and so we don’t think of ourselves as evil. I wonder where God draws the line?

We might make excuses for ourselves and for other people too if we think there are mitigating reasons for going astray. Our God, who is perfect, the God of justice and compassion surely does this too? In our reading from Kings, we were told that Solomon asked for and was given the gift of ‘an understanding mind... able to discern between good and evil’. The Lord was pleased that Solomon asked for this. God knows us. God does understand us.

According to our parables the Kingdom of Heaven is somewhere we all want to be. It’s a wonderful place of flourishing in the presence of God, a place more precious than anything else, a place of hope and promise with no evil to mar it, a place of love which grows as we love others. It’s also a place which is hidden, so that we need to search for it and then hold on to it once we’ve found it.

We like the sound of the Kingdom of Heaven. But we can’t ignore the furnace of fire, so what’s that? Well to start with we need to remember that God is love, God loves us and everything that Jesus teaches us is for our benefit. Everyone wants a perfect world, where evil doesn’t exist. In fact, people may rail against God because of the bad things that happen. Some people don’t believe in God because the world isn’t perfect, they think that if God exists action should be taken now to wipe away evil.

And so the furnace of fire is a promise, not a threat - a promise that evil and sources of evil will be destroyed. Those who spread evil in the world will come to regret it, whether in this life or in the life to come. We need to pray for unkind people, that they will repent and be saved, as well as confessing our own sins and trying to do better. It’s interesting how widespread the belief is that everyone will need to face up to our words and actions - there’s a whole generation of people who don’t believe in God but who do believe in a kind of pay-back Karma.

God knows what is in our hearts and minds, whether we are intentional in doing God’s will, seeking to do and say what is right in God’s eyes. The Holy Spirit helps us to be discerning, to carry out our calling and to fully utilise all of the good things God has given us to share. We can love and trust in the Lord.

The lyrics of the song go on to say ‘We learn to live when we learn to give each other what we need to survive, together alive.’ In other words, when we learn how to love one another, we begin to live ourselves. Love for others comes as an echo of the love we give and receive from God, the treasure which we have found in Jesus, the pearl of great value - the most important thing in our lives. This love, I am convinced, grows the Kingdom of Heaven Jesus spoke about in our parables.

Paul’s input from our reading in Romans gives us beautiful words to end with:

‘I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’. (Romans 8:38-9)

Amen.

Julie Rubidge, Lay Minister.