From Volume 7, Number 2, Autumn 2000

The Way of the Giver:  Oswald

 In spite of all contrary evidence, I still like to play my 33¢ lottery  ticket, i.e. the great sweepstakes offers that litter the mailbox. My sad  justification is that it would enable me to support many ministries about which  I care. In that sense I think of myself as a Giver, I enjoy being generous.  However, the spiritual gift of giving is more about investing than the sort of  largesse I want to exercise. In our economy, an investor puts financial backing  in a project in order to reap profits from the project later on. The spiritual  investor invests in ministries that build the Kingdom of God in order that the  Kingdom may profit and grow.

 It is quite a challenge to find a Celtic saint who exemplifies this gift.  What we know of the saints comes from the writings of Bede or from  hagiographies. In neither case is wealth considered a virtue for which a saint  should be admired. Where wealthy characters appear they do so to illustrate  their holiness by giving up their wealth to become poor for Christ's sake, or  sometimes to illustrate their sinfulness by greed and manipulation. While there  is great benefit in becoming poor for Christ's sake, we are often slow to admit  that there is equal benefit in creating wealth for Christ's sake.

 The giver is generally a person who knows how to make money and to do it  honestly and with Christian integrity. The shrewdness and foresight that they  use in the marketplace is also translated to matters of the kingdom. When  approached by Christians to support an extant ministry or help launch a new one  the giver will want to know how does it build the Kingdom? How does the ministry  plan to raise continued support? Where does the vision come from? How has it  been guided and sustained by prayer? The giver also looks within to see if the  vision strikes a resonant chord in his or her own heart. Once the giver is  satisfied that the enterprise has its source in God and is thoroughly grounded,  investing in the vision is a joy and delight.

 There are various problems associated with the giver. The major problem is  not with the giver himself, but with the attitudes of Christians toward him.  These attitudes are contradictory extremes and neither of them is godly. The  first, and in western culture, most pervasive, is to imitate the world's envy of  and admiration for the rich. The rich person is valued for things that have  nothing to do with the Kingdom and his heart for God and God's ways are ignored.  The rich person is beset with temptations of self-sufficiency, self-indulgence  and self-importance. When we give them significance in the Body only because of  riches, we enforce those temptations and hinder their discipleship. Remembering  Jesus' warning that it was extremely difficult for the rich to enter the  Kingdom, we should rather have compassion and make every effort to affirm them  as they seek to maintain godly values in an ungodly marketplace.

 The second attitude may also be a form of envy. We can reject the rich  because they are rich, cynically assuming that wealth is always the product of  callous calculation or dishonesty. In doing so we dishonor God and move the  ground of salvation from God's grace to moral rectitude.

Most often the person with the spiritual gift of Giving is one capable of  acts of loving extravagance for God, like Mary Magdalene who anointed Jesus'  feet with the costliest perfumed ointment available. It is this extravagance  that makes Oswald our best example of this gift among the Celtic saints. Aidan  was present at a feast with Oswald and rich food was set before them on silver  plates. As Aidan was raising his hands to bless the meal, the household steward  responsible for giving alms to the poor came in to inform the king that a great  crowd of the poor were out on the road begging alms. Oswald ordered his food to  be given to the poor and the plates broken up and distributed among them. Aidan,  moved by the king's generous spirit, took the king's hand and prayed "May this  hand never wither!" When Oswald was slain in battle, that hand and arm were  severed. Oswald's successor Oswy retrieved the hand and placed it in a reliquary  at the royal city of Bamburgh. Bede reported that the hand was still uncorrupted  a century later. Oswald's hand and head now rest in Cuthbert's tomb in Durham  Cathedral.