It’s the final of the World Cup. England 0-0 Brazil.

Stevie Gerrard is bearing down on goal, with five minutes left.

He’s past the last defender. The keeper comes out towards him. Wayne Rooney is unmarked on his left, with an open goal.

Should Gerrard pass? Should he shoot? Should he try to take it round the keeper? Will he score? Will he miss? If he does score, will England hang on and win? Will life ever be the same again?!

STOP! Before you answer any of those, try this one... who owns the ball?

Any ideas? England? Brazil? Walcott? Fifa perhaps? The groundsman?

Guess what? – Nobody cares. It’s completely and utterly immaterial. It’s totally meaningless to the situation unfolding.

In football, ownership is irrelevant. Possession, and what you do with it, is everything. Those that succeed are those that use their possession well. They pass the ball to those who can use it best at a particular moment, and work together as one.

Guess what again? – As it is in football, so it is in life.

Our society is dominated by a rampant capitalism that emphasises ownership – of homes, cars, clothes and gadgets. But it’s all bunkum. The apostles in Acts 4 lived such an exemplary life because they made a fundamental distinction – that between ownership and possession.

We need to regard what we are in possession of as God’s, not ours. We may be in possession of it, but only temporarily. We are custodians, not masters. Guardians, not owners. And, therefore, we must have no qualms about sharing, relinquishing or giving our time, wealth and property to those who can make better use of it, and who need it more than we do.

If my clunky football metaphor doesn’t sway you, then listen to someone far more eloquent – Canon Subir Biswas of Calcutta. In the early 1970s, St Paul’s Cathedral in his city became a massive warehouse for refugees fleeing East Bengal and Subir devoted himself to helping the desperate and feeding the hungry.

And on the walls of his cathedral, he plastered a billboard with these words: “You are not making a gift of our wealth to the poor. You are giving him what is his own. What has been given for the good of all, you have allocated to yourself. The world is given to all, not just the rich.”