Matthew 5-17

We have said that Matthew’s gospel is primarily directed at a readership with a Jewish background. It is clear that their Jewish background and traditions were things which it was not easy for Christian converts to give up. Both Paul and Matthew go out of their way to assure Jewish converts that Christianity is not a rejection of Judaism but its natural development. It is everything that Judaism is and more. 

So, in today’s passage which continues the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus solemnly assures his readers, “Do not imagine that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to complete them.” Jesus has not come not to terminate the Law but to bring it to a higher level. (In a rough simile, it is like the upgrading of a computer by e.g. increasing its memory. It is still the same computer doing the same things, only better and faster.) The vision of Jesus helps us to see the Law in a new light. 

So Jesus says that the Law is still to be observed. Of course, we will see very clearly in the following days exactly what Jesus means. He is not saying that every single injunction of the Law (some of which seem very strange to us) has to be literally observed but rather that the spirit behind those injunctions is still in force. His words are meant to console but they are also a challenge, as we shall see. The New Law does not mean simply the addition of new elements. There is what we would call now a ‘paradigm shift’ to a Way which goes beyond laws to the Law of Love. 

In our Church, too, we need to be ready to move forward creatively to new ways of understanding our faith and living it out. The traditions of the past are still valid but we must never get bogged down in them to the extent that we do not respond to the clear signs of the times. Tradition can be understood in two ways: either as a fundamental belief that has existed from the very beginning or simply a way of doing or understanding things which has been around for a long time. 

When will the Church stop changing? we hear some people ask. The answer is, Hopefully never. The day we close ourselves to change is the day we die, as Paul warns us in the Second Letter to the Corinthians. To quote Cardinal Newman, To live is to change; to be perfect is to have changed often. He knew about change. He made radical changes in his own understanding of the Christian faith, changes which he saw as unavoidable although they involved great sacrifices on his part and led him from the Anglican to the Catholic Church.

Talitha Koum

Jairus’s Daughter. 

When Jesus had crossed again [in the boat] to the other side, a large crowd gathered around him, and he stayed close to the sea. One of the synagogue officials, named Jairus, came forward. Seeing him he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him, saying, “My daughter is at the point of death. Please, come lay your hands on her that she may get well and live.” He went off with him, and a large crowd followed him and pressed upon him. While he was still speaking, people from the synagogue official’s house arrived and said, “Your daughter has died; why trouble the teacher any longer?” Disregarding the message that was reported, Jesus said to the synagogue official, “Do not be afraid; just have faith.” He did not allow anyone to accompany him inside except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they arrived at the house of the synagogue official, he caught sight of a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. So he went in and said to them, “Why this commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but asleep.”And they ridiculed him. Then he put them all out. He took along the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and entered the room where the child was. He took the child by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise!” The girl, a child of twelve, arose immediately and walked around. [At that] they were utterly astounded. He gave strict orders that no one should know this and said that she should be given something to eat.

I have given much thought and prayer about how to unpack this passage, hoping to find a softer, easier landing for what has been revealed to me. Nothing has come to mind so away we go. For nearly every Christian, there are passages in the Bible where the words draw a believer into a crucible, an act where faith and experience are cast into a furnace hotter than the sun. After the smelter cools, the person comes out with the dross that weakened them discarded and their troubles sanctified. What remains is a person changed by the encounter. This simple little story about a synagogue official and his daughter is one place where life shoved me headlong into a crucible which only after a long period of time has left me to rest with memory and shared experience.

The gospel story is simple. Jesus was walking through a crowd when a Jew who normally would have curled his lip at Jesus and insulted him, became desperate enough seek the help of Jesus for his ill daughter. Jesus agreed to come to offer help. Along the way, Jesus healed another person but before they could get to the home of the official, the word came the girl died. Jesus challenged the official, a man named Jarius to have faith even in the face of terrible news. When they arrived at the house, they found a household consume by grief. When Jesus asked why they were grieving because there girl was not dead but was sleeping, they jeered him in doubt.

Now comes the moment of the crucible. “Talitha Koum,” Jesus called. “Little girl, raise up.” The girl woke up and was healed.

Let me tell the story of the crucible. On a fine sunny day like this in June 1986, I accompanied my wife to the baby doctor’s office to check on the health of a baby who was in the 28th week of pregnancy. Life was good. In January of that year we had been graced to adopt a baby boy after several years of trying to have another baby. Our first attempt ended in the 28th week, an event which shattered us but we then were excited to embrace the remarkable truth of the old wife’s tale that the best cure for infertility was to to adopt. A natural baby would soon follow along when adoption would relax the high anxiety of trying to conceive.

During the course of the examination, the mood in the room changed. The Ultrasound Nurse become more and more agitated moving the microphone around my wife’s stomach before the nurse jumped out and ran out of the room. A few minutes later one of the doctors in the clinic, not our normal doctors, came in with a ashen countenance. He used the microphone himself for a few minutes but then all he had to do was turn and look at us and we knew. The baby had died.


The worst part had to follow, an induced delivery and the arrival of a lifeless baby. Calling on our faith to sustain us through another tragedy, we did what as needed. In the hours prior to the delivery, I was drawn back to this verse over and over again.

Thoughts plagued me. Why Jairus and not us? Why did this happen again? Why was it so hard to have a baby? There are no answers understood in the moment, only the stark recognition that resurrection and eternal life requires death. Death, such a strange, terrible and beautiful word.

The nurse wrapped the baby girl up in a blanket and her to me and left us to be alone with the moment. I could not speak. My wife could not speak. We just sat it took it all in or at least we tried to take in the finality of the moment. I wish now I had written more about the minutes we spent together because time has erased many of the details that seemed so vivid then A sudden fury welled up in me and I stifled the urge to scream out in anger. The emotion faded and an unfamiliar voice began to talk. The words I spoke stunned me then and they still burn though my heart today

I said, “Jairus and his family heard Jesus say, “Talitha Koum” and the dead girl woke up and lived again. I can’t begin to understand this but, I name you, our daughter, Talitha and so knowing you will arise some day also but today.” I anointed the baby with Holy Water I had in a bottle in my pocket. How it came to be I had the little squeeze bottle in my possession remains a mystery. Perhaps there was plan hatched deep down inside me to do what I did but I don’t remember any such thing. I repeated the triune baptism ritual and gave the baby over to my wife.

What I did that day was right thing to do. It declared a faith I doubted, consumed as I was by grief and anger, and it comforted my wife whose faith was triumphant. I know now Talitha will raise up again. We all will. The miracle for Jairus was needed to help Jesus teach the point. There is still no answer why there was no miracle for us and that our daughter fell asleep before her first breath. Such questions are imponderable. What comes to mind is the magnificent son we born to us 15 months later. He is an incredible human being and the challenges he has overcome amaze me. He treats others exactly as the gospel demands. God does not bargain but certainly if Talitha had not died, Brian might never have been born. Another imponderable I have to leave to God.

The crucible has cooled now. My faith is restored and enlarged. The story of Jairus did what was needed by bringing me from where I was to where I am. I don’t know how to describe this place other than to say I have a sure and certain knowledge I am and we are exactly where God intended. I remember John, our first baby who came to prepare the way for the others children given us and Talitha this morning with gratitude for the gift of the resurrection and the promise of life eternal. Amen.

Swine in Brine Mark 5:1-20

The Healing of the Gerasene Demoniac.

They came to the other side of the sea, to the territory of the Gerasenes. When he got out of the boat, at once a man from the tombs who had an unclean spirit met him. The man had been dwelling among the tombs, and no one could restrain him any longer, even with a chain. In fact, he had frequently been bound with shackles and chains, but the chains had been pulled apart by him and the shackles smashed, and no one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the hillsides he was always crying out and bruising himself with stones. Catching sight of Jesus from a distance, he ran up and prostrated himself before him, crying out in a loud voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me!” (He had been saying to him, “Unclean spirit, come out of the man!”) He asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “Legion is my name. There are many of us.” And he pleaded earnestly with him not to drive them away from that territory. Now a large herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside. And they pleaded with him, “Send us into the swine. Let us enter them.” And he let them, and the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine. The herd of about two thousand rushed down a steep bank into the sea, where they were drowned. The swineherds ran away and reported the incident in the town and throughout the countryside. And people came out to see what had happened. As they approached Jesus, they caught sight of the man who had been possessed by Legion, sitting there clothed and in his right mind. And they were seized with fear.Those who witnessed the

incident explained to them what had happened to the possessed man and to the swine. Then they began to beg him to leave their district. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed pleaded to remain with him. But he would not permit him but told him instead, “Go home to your family and announce to them all that the Lord in his pity has done for you.”Then the man went off and began to proclaim in the Decapolis what Jesus had done for him; and all were amazed.

I have always found this passage to be unsettling because there are seemingly multiple factors found within it that are not perfectly lined up with the rest of the Gospel.

First, at the conclusion of Mark 4, Jesus left the area of capernam where he had been teaching. The last passage of chapter is when the disciples were terrified by a storm at sea and were accused by Jesus of lacking faith. At the beginning of chapter 5, they landed in on the east side of the Sea of Galilee in what amounted to being in a foreign country. This curious because up to this point Jesus had been preaching to his own people, quite literally, in Galilee. Now, however, he was entering into an area where his message would be completely out of context.

Next is the matter of the demoniac. This guy is the baddest dude in the New Testament and not only is there one demon, there are many and even stranger, they recognized Jesus as being the son of God. How did they know?

When Jesus cast out the demons, they did not immediately return to Hell or wherever evicted demons are sent, but were placed into a herd of pigs that then stampeded into the sea and drowned. To ancient Jews, sending the demons over the cliff inside pigs made perfect sense. Pigs, after all, were unclean. To locals, however, there would be a loss of context. A whole load of ham and bacon went to waste for no fathomable reason.

I could use a lot of fancy words and concepts to break down this passage because this passage like all other gospel stories, makes sense and it holds together theologically but a hundreds of words can shed any more light than a very simple explanation.

Mark was the gospel meant for gentiles. The trip to the east side of the lake served a message that was not meant just for the Jews of Palestine. It was meant for everyone everywhere. It has to have been uncomfortable to leave a largely homogenous society to go to strange places like Samaria or the Decapolis but it was part of the mission of evangelization. I am called to reach out those who don’t look like me, think like me, eat like or belief like me. I get it. Jesus wants us to get to it and, by the way, be happy about it.

Still, I can’t let go of all of the wasted pork. I think I just heard a sigh from my smoke house, the BBQ grill and the Traeger.

Sad, You See - Mark12:18-27

Some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and put this question to him, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us,‘If someone’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wifeand raise up descendants for his brother.’Now there were seven brothers.The first married a woman and died, leaving no descendants.So the second brother married her and died, leaving no descendants, and the third likewise. And the seven left no descendants. Last of all the woman also died.

At the resurrection when they arise whose wife will she be? For all seven had been married to her.”

Jesus said to them, “Are you not misled because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage,
but they are like the angels in heaven. As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God told him,
I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob.

He is not God of the dead but of the living.You are greatly misled.”

So who were those guys? They pop up through out the gospels and are clearly antithetical Jesus from the first days of his public ministry and remained zealously opposed through the death and resurrection even right up until they were wiped along a along with Pharisees and other temple Jews following the rebellion in 70 AD. Why did Jesus bother with them? They were few in number but their impact on Jewish society in Israel was far out of proportion to their numbers. Why? They were the upper crust, educated, wealthy, politically astute and connected, they were favored by the Romans because they, the Sadducees, were very invested in protecting the status quo. Needless to say, Jesus posed a threat to them because Jesus was all about turning the temple economy upside down. Curiously, they did not believe in the resurrection because they put full stock in the Pentateuch which they believed was silent about a resurrection possibility. When an individual died, they were dead in all ways and there was no possibility of life after death. I find it strange that a group so dedicated to God could be so utterly opposed to a life with God beyond death.

Looking around today, are there movements like the Sadducees present in our society? Who are they? I hesitate to name them lest I come across as entitled and judgmental but I have no choice but look at is happening and I how I see it relate to the gospel. Are there those who claim righteousness but then fail to see Jesus in our lives. Is it right to proclaim belief and the right to worship in freedom but when it comes to living the live demanded of the gospel, they turn away against those who hold fast to belied? No. Is it right for those who are willing to focus tightly on one moral issue but abandon everything else that goes with it? Again, no. Am I guilty of one of these? I am. I regret it but I can’t let go.

Jesus, however, sidestepped the issue neatly by simply denying the legitimacy of the arguments that were so carefully laid out to trap him. Revelation did not end with the Pentateuch, it continued on through history but then after silence of a several hundred years, a last prophet, John, came to announce the prophet who would fulfill all. Resurrection is true, the word did not change but evolved. God did not say he WAS the God of all, he said he IS God of all. He still is.

What does that mean for us today? Modern Sadducees who deny the role of the Gospel to moderate and influence behavior need to be confronted with the the falsity of religious freedom only being about worship. We also, however, have to embrace the gospel in its entirety and not just cherry pick what we think is important because even if it is the most important, it is not to be considered to exclusion of all else.

I don’t know how to do that except to love the next person I meet bearing the entirety of the gospel on my back and in my soul.

Imortal Diamond - Week 8

 A rare day of rain for us here today has opened the door for quiet reflection and writing. I am happy to be able to post early in the week rather than at the 11th hour. 

Fr. Richard says, "that our fear of death is actually our fear of God."

1. How have you seen that to be true in your life or the life of others?

There is a curious paradigm for me in this question. As an Enneagram 6, I live in fear as a default, but my fear is cluttered up with the trivial concerns of the false self. I ask myself pointless questions:

• What did I forget to do yesterday?
• Did I repay Joe for the cash he lent for lunch last week?
• Should I call my mother?
• Is my wife unhappy with me today?
• Did I feed the cat?

Patiently I have to work through the questions as they pop up and use the tools earned over the years to put the trivial in perspective so I can move on with the flow of the day. When you ask me if I am afraid of death, I can honestly say I am not. Big things are easier for me to deal with the minutiae because the true self pops up when the times are most difficult. I am somewhat fearful of heights and it takes work to get over my hesitation to look over the railings and edges that mark the transitions between high places and low. My hesitation I think is more focused on the fear of the sensation of falling then than on what might happen when I land.

The truth is I have some risk factors that put me at risk even though I am currently in no danger, but I live with the knowledge I might go out to the mailbox but then suffer a stroke that will keep me from ever going back into the house again. It happened to my aunt when she suffered a stroke on her way to the mailbox. My fear is not that I will die should I have a stroke but that I will not die, and I will have to endure what she did for months before peace came for her. The other truth is I suffer from a fatal disease but it is a disease where I can make a daily decision to live another day in remission from the effects of the disease. 

When death knocked on the door for an elderly man who lived next door, his wife asked me to come to be with him. This man was like Zacchaeus in stature but like a giant in his faith.  He attended Mass virtually daily and was greatly loved by his family. As his walk came to end, he sometimes showed fear and intense emotion. I finally asked him why he was so afraid of death because he radiated faith so intensely and passionately at other times. I reminded him he has survived two serious cancer bouts and so facing death was nothing new to him. He took my hand and looked me in the eye saying he was not afraid of being dead, he had no fear whatsoever, but he was afraid of dying badly. I understood him. He did not fear God he was afraid of himself. This morning, years later I now finally understand his fear. He was concerned his false self would get in the way of dying well. At that moment, however, I was able to smile, squeeze his hand, and assure him he was dying a good death.

This has not been a common experience, to be more afraid of dying than of death, for those who are not taking their steps. They live like God is keeping a scorecard every day, recording missed strokes or lost balls. I have to ask myself if my false self is getting in the way of having peace and joy given the sure and certain knowledge of the life after death promised by an ever-merciful God.

2. How have you witnessed God allowing and using your "diversionary tactics [False Self] to get [you] to the full destination [True Self]"?

I believe we touched on this before. My seeming unstoppable need for approval and recognition often pushes me to take steps intended to will the good of another but really begin with intentions to will the good of myself. The great blessing of my life is God has permitted a beneficial outcome for those character defects by pushing the power of the Holy Spirit through the imperfect vessel that is me. Thank God for that – I take solace God has been able to use brokenness to further his well. I am only one of the countless examples who have benefitted from his ability to take Good from the Un-good.

 

Mark 10:32-45 At what price ambition?

Mark 10:32-45

The disciples were on the way, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus went ahead of them.

They were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. Taking the Twelve aside again, he began to tell them what was going to happen to him.

“Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man
will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes,
and they will condemn him to death and hand him over to the Gentiles who will mock him, spit upon him, scourge him, and put him to death,
but after three days he will rise.”

Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus and said to him,
‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.”



He replied, ‘What do you wish me to do for you?”

They answered him, “Grant that in your glory we may sit one at your right and the other at your left.”

Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the chalice that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?”

They said to him, ‘We can.”

Jesus said to them, “The chalice that I drink, you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right or at my left is not mine to give but is for those for whom it has been prepared.”

When the ten heard this, they became indignant at James and John.

Jesus summoned them and said to them, “You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve
and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

James and John along with the other disciples are keeping Jesus company on his travels. In the preceding passage, they are traveling to Jerusalem when Jesus will enter into his passion.

I am not sure how James and John could miss the message Jesus shared about what was to happen but miss it they did.

From our perspective looking back at what Jesus told them would be impossible to overlook. Perhaps, however, they were so used to Jesus speaking in parables and metaphors that they did not take him literally when he told them about the torture and mistreatment that was going to happen. Remembering the crazy impossibility of death and resurrection, they had no clue about the future.

I would like to retell this story using a different analogy. Jesus and the disciples are embarking on a great voyage to a wondrous place. They were walking up the gangplank to board a great beautiful ocean liner. Before they board, Jesus tells them that the ship was going to sink, and they would all drown. Jesus would drown first but then be resurrected. Later on, the rest of them drown even though they could have chosen to climb on a lifeboat and spared from that manner of death.

“Cool,” James and John said. “Can we sit in the front of the boat with you, one on each side?” Excuse me. What part of drown did they not hear?

Meanwhile, just as they step over the gangplank, James said to John, “Look the name of the ship is the Titanic. This should ship must be so big it can’t sink.” Un ha.

The question running through my mind is if some days or even most days am I thinking like one of the brothers? Jesus has given a clear message. We have to die to ourselves in order to join with him. We have to be willing to give up another kind of life to enter into the life with him we say we want.

Is ambition clouding my judgment and cloaking over my true need for humility so that some weak part of me can say, “Look at me! Aren’t I holy? I am sitting in the front seat of the boat with Jesus. What will it take for me to remember that the call to die to self is not made to me alone but to all of us so we can equally share in the sacrifice and equally share the reward? I guess the need for the occasional scriptural slap in the face is still a thing. Like a daily thing.

Time to head to the back of the boat.

Luke 19:1-10 Zacchaeus the Tax Collector.

He came to Jericho and intended to pass through the town. Now a man there named Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man, who was seeking to see who Jesus was; but he could not see him because of the crowd, for he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see Jesus, who was about to pass that way. When he reached the place, Jesus looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.” And he came down quickly and received him with joy. 

When they all saw this, they began to grumble, saying, “He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner.” 

But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over.” 

And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a descendant of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.”

This is one of the lovely stories of the bible that reaches out to me and takes me back to my first days in Sunday School at the First Methodist Church in Anaconda. It is one of the stories in every bible storybook for children. What kid did not climb a tree or at least want to do but were kept on the ground by a fear of heights, or, more accurately a fear of falling. 

The message is this bad guy (tax collectors are bad, right?) wanted to see Jesus so badly he climbed up a tree to see the Lord pass by but he was too short to see over the crowd. Short. there is another childhood connection.  What child did not feel frustrated at some point not being able to see things tall people could see? Great stuff. 

Now we are called to take another look at the story through the eyes of adulthood and when we do we see much about the story still calls out to us. 

Within each of us, St. Augustine teaches is the great desire to seek God. That means every human from the beginning of human time, through the present and on to the future until, well, until we all rest in him. There is an understanding, however, we can lose the desire by repeatedly choosing sin over salvation so often for so long we no longer can recognize the urge. Think of Hitler, Pontious Pilate, or, in our age, Osama Bin Laden. 

For the rest of us, however, no matter how great the sin or propensity to sin, the elements of conscience remain present and the possibility of redemption remains. What sparked the desire of Zaccheus to Jesus? Was it the quiet niggling of his conscious that triggered a need to just see what was happening? is there is a lesson here for us? For me. 

Some other thoughts about Zaccheus. Why didn't he just edge up through the crowd to the front like a Japanese tourist at the Grand Canyon? Elbows and shoulders out in front wedging openings and cracks until at least there was an unimpeded view. For one thing, he was a tax collector being pushy to be upfront would be a grand way to get some rotten veggies in the back of the head. Maybe even some rocks would be thrown and he would certainly bit spit on and cursed at. Better to find a way to stay out of the direct view of others who held grudges.

There is also this thought. To be in the very front of the crowd would make him conspicuous since he would stand out not just because of his diminutive stature but because he was no doubt dressed to the hilt like he was pretending to be a Roman Citizen. He would have certainly stood out like a pimped-up thumb and Jesus would most certainly notice him. Again, being stealthy would be a better option. 

I am sure it crossed his mind that he might have been able to climb a tree, hide in the branches and see everything he wanted to see and not be seen himself. How all that work out? Not so well. We can laugh at the absurdity of a well-groomed little man climbing up a tree and out its branches as if he could still have it all his way. Maybe we should be laughing nervously because the gospel passages don't shine a light on specific people at a specific point in time. They have meaning for all of us no matter our station and no matter our time. 

I want to be seen in a certain way so that I will appear favorably to others. If I am not ready to be seen, I will sneak to the rear and try to find another viewpoint that doesn't bear the risk of being found out. It did not work for Zaccheus and it does work for me or for any of us. When we try to see the Lord for whatever reason, be it fear, longing, desire, sorrow, or some other silent need stirring up from the deep, we invite him to see us but we realize is he has been looking at us all along and knows what is in our heart before we can even call it out to ourselves. Meister Eckhart famously taught us that God sees us through the same eye through which we see him. It is pointless to hide from him. Look to the lesson of Jeremiah who was told by the Lord God that Jeremiah was known before he was in his mother's womb. 

Sitting outside for a time reflecting on poor Zaccheus, another thought comes to mind, a comparison between the rich young man in Matthew 19 who, when informed by the Lord he needed to sell all and follow him, the young man went away sad for he had many things. This guy has haunted me over the years because I too have many things and I don't want to be sad because they separate me from God. I wrestle the thoughts like Jacob wrestled angel but today I am reminded of another insight. Zaccheus was not told to sell everything. He had a meaningful call to invite our Lord into his house for a celebration and Zaccheus jumped at the idea. He also volunteered to pay back with interest those from whom he has stolen. He did not wait for the other shoe to drop. He took it off and dropped it himself. 

In my language that means to offer amends to those who I have wronged.  It also means the God wants us to not be trapped from service by our belongings but use them to the benefit of others. What I have now belongs to my wife and my children and it is left up to me to use those things well and not selfishly.