It’s surprising how much religious controversy there is on social media. Reading today’s Epistle, it sounds almost as though St Paul anticipated this, for he tells Timothy to warn the members of his congregation

…that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening.

And it’s true that too much theological argument never gets above the level of wrangling over words. Yet the corner of cyberspace that you might call Anglican Twitter can be quite rewarding. At the moment, there is a passionate but well-informed debate about the rights and wrongs of the idea that theologians call Universalism, the idea that in the end everyone will, having undergone the judgement of God, accept God’s mercy and forgiveness. To put it another way, the idea that Hell will be empty. It’s a minority view and that’s hardly surprising. Forgiveness for Hitler? For Stalin? For Vladimir Putin? That would be a very tall order and it shocks our instinctive belief that bad behaviour should be punished, and that punishments should, as W.S. Gilbert famously put it, “fit the crime”.

The Mikado’s aim in that song was, of course, innocent merriment, and those familiar with the lyrics will remember that he proposed sending one category of offenders to church:

All prosy dull society sinners

Who chatter and bleat and bore

Are sent to hear sermons

From mystical Germans

Who preach from ten till four.

Many lengthy sermons have been preached on this issue, but this isn’t going to be one of them. The simple answer is that we don’t know how the judgement and the mercy of God operate, and what the relationship between them is. We shall have to wait and see. And it’s important to remember that our theological preferences probably tell us much more about ourselves than they do about the Almighty. My inclination towards universalism may be rooted in the fact that no-one has ever done anything really cruel or terrible either to me or to those whom I love. Another person’s insistence that there has to be everlasting punishment for heinous wrongdoing may well be rooted in unimaginably appalling experiences.

That said, we need to ask whether our human instinct to want punishment and retribution is necessarily a good instinct. We all have a tendency to draw boundaries, to think in terms of “us” and “them” and to project that kind of thinking into our religious beliefs.

As Scotland’s national bard memorably put it:

O ye wha are sae guid yoursel',

Sae pious and sae holy,

Ye've nought to do but mark and tell

Your neibours' fauts and folly!

You won’t find easy answers to the debate about universalism in the New Testament.           At times, Jesus speaks of a judgement in which people will be divided into sheep and goats, and he also speaks vividly of the punishment that God will mete out to the selfish – think, for example, of the parable of Dives and Lazarus. At other times, he speaks of a God who is lovingly forgiving of folly and wickedness – remember the parable of the Prodigal Son. It might be helpful also to consider Jesus’ actions as well as his words, and today’s Gospel offers an opportunity to do that. It’s a healing miracle and it suggests that the love of God is unquestioning and indiscriminate and reaches across human boundaries.

We find Jesus and his disciples in the frontier region between Galilee (which was definitely their home territory) and Samaria (which was definitely not). They are journeying in an in-between place, on the margin between two cultures and two ways of believing. In that marginal place, Jesus and his disciples encounter a group of lepers – people rendered homeless and helpless by disease, people who are themselves marginalised. The lepers even feel the need to keep their distance from Jesus when they ask for his help.

Jesus’ response to them is interesting. He asks no questions of them. He is indifferent to the lives that they led before they fell ill. He doesn’t attempt to assess whether they deserve to be healed. He is also clearly aware that not all of them are Jewish. The instruction that he gives them is “Go and show yourselves to the priests” – plural – in other words the Samaritan leper is being encouraged to seek out a Samaritan priest. So boundaries have been crossed – Jesus reaching out to heal marginalized people, regardless of their behaviour, their race or indeed their religious beliefs. The Samaritan praises God and gives thanks for the healing he has experienced. And that is a double healing – for he has not only been cured of leprosy, but he – the foreigner, the religious outsider - has been accepted, praised and affirmed by Jesus.

So our Gospel is a reminder that the frontiers, borders and boundaries that we humans are so good at creating mean nothing to God. We are also reminded that we are called to be thankful together. The togetherness part of that is hugely important, because we aren’t in church to secure our individual salvation. We are here to commit to a process in which God will bring the whole of creation to perfection. The whole of creation – and that might just turn out to include people whom we regard as appalling, unforgiveable villains.

We are called to be thankful together, and today’s Gospel is a useful reminder of that, for when we read that the leper thanked Jesus, the Greek word that Luke uses is Euchariston – and the early Christians who listened to the Gospel in Greek would have made that connection to the Eucharist when they heard this passage. Out of our Eucharist, out of our thankfulness that we are included in God’s love, there should arise an awareness that, at least potentially, everyone else is too. How that works in individual cases remains a mystery and judgement is not our job.

Robert Burns put that well in the final stanza of Address to the Unco Guid

Who made the heart, 'tis He alone

Decidedly can try us;

He knows each chord, its various tone,

Each spring, its various bias:

Then at the balance let's be mute,

We never can adjust it;

What's done we partly may compute,

But know not what's resisted.