Today we gather in remembrance and celebration of St. George, known around the world as the “Great Martyr.”

We are told that St George was a Christian knight and that he was born in Cappadocia.  Unusual things happen to saints, and it happened that as George was riding one day in the province of Lybia, and he came upon a city called Sylene, near which was a marshy swamp.  In this swamp lived a dragon.  The people had mustered together to attack and kill it, but its breath was so terrible that all had fled.  To prevent its coming nearer they supplied it every day with two sheep, but when the sheep grew scarce, a human victim had to be substituted.  This victim was selected by lot, and the lot just then had fallen on the king’s own daughter.  No one was willing to take her place, and the maiden had gone forth dressed as a bride to meet her doom.  Then St George, coming upon the scene, attacked the dragon and transfixed it with his lance.  But that was not the end of the story… George borrowed the maiden’s girdle, fastened it round the dragon’s neck, and returned it to her so that she could lead the monster captive into the city.  But that was not the end of the story…The people were in mortal terror at the sight of the dragon being led down the street, and so were about to take flight, but St George told them to have no fear. But that was not the end of the story. George knew a opportunity when he saw one and he said to the people, If only they would believe in Jesus Christ and be baptized, he would slay the dragon.  The king and all his subjects gladly assented.  George slew the dragon, but that was not the end of the story.  The king and the city officials needed four ox-carts to carry the carcass to a safe distance.  And that was the end of the story.

When I told this story to our Montessori kids, children ranging in age from three to six, this story, they squealed in delight when George saved the princess and they howled with laughter about the four carts need to take away the stinking dragon.  O.k. so they did enjoy this story more than my usual stories about Jesus healing the sick and casting out devils.  But I guess we need this kind of story to discover who we are and to help us on our journey to what we will become. But despite how much the Montessori kids loved this story even more than stories about Jesus, I am afraid that most of these vivid details were added to the life of George in the 13th century.  So who was St. George?  For Grown ups, who is the great martyr?

According to the most reliable - even if rather sketchy - sources, our St George was born in about AD 265 into a Christian family, indeed in Cappadocia, what we call modern Turkey. About the age of 17, he enlisted as a cavalry soldier in the army of the Roman emperor, Diocletian.

The next we hear of George is in 304, by which time he had risen to senior rank in the Roman army and was serving in Lydia, a town about half way between modern Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.   But dark times once again befell the Roman Empire.  It was in the early 300s that the emperor Diocletian began his savage persecution of Christians, and when George refused to compromise or renounce his Christian faith, he was tortured and eventually beheaded in April 304. That is the bare outline of his story. But in an age of persecution when Christians desperately needed role models, George’s fame spread quickly.  As early as 322 his martyrdom is written up, Constantine erects a church the Mosque of St George; he was canonized in the next century.

What are we to learn from St George for our own lives and for our own time?  Venantius Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers, whose hymns are included in our Hymnal, wrote in the sixth century:

"Gleams the strong palace of the noble martyr George,
Whose honour strews the whole wide world.

"In valour mighty, tombed beneath eastern heavens,
Lo, neath western skies he offers help."

 

 In a sleepy university town in Virginia, thirty two students and faculty members died, senseless meaningless deaths.  We have had a week of national mourning. But in this same week in Iraq on one day, over two hundred civilians died, senseless, meaningless deaths.  Tragedy knows no borders. And a poet and faculty member of Virginia Tech made the connection between the sense tragedy in Virginia and the tragedies that go unnoticed the world over.  She spoke these moving words that I recount from memory:

We are not moving on…we are embracing our mourning.  We are strong enough to stand tall fearlessly.  We are brave enough to bend to cry and sad enough to know we must laugh again. We do not understand this tragedy.  We know we did nothing to deserve it but neither does a child in Africa dying of aids; neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by a rogue army; neither does the baby elephant watching his community being destroyed for ivory; neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water;  neither does the Appalachian child killed in the middle of the night in  his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves such a tragedy.  We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid.  We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be.

Who is St George and what help does he offer us under these western skies.

George helps find our own way externally and internally: First by who St George is to the world, he helps us and he calls us to be open to the stranger and the foreigner.  George was no white Anglo Saxon protestant. He was a Turkish national, who spent half his life in Palestine.  Furthermore, the Domain must share his patronage with more countries than any other saint in the calendar.  George is England’s saint and protector, but he is also patron saint of Greece, Germany, Portugal, Lithuania, Palestine, the State of Georgia, Catalonia, and Aragon, the cities of Moscow, Istanbul, and Genoa.  St George may have a chapel in Windsor castle, but he is probably more honored in Orthodox Churches than Anglican or Roman ones.  In the Northern highlands of Ethiopia, in the rock churches of Lalibela, whole Churches carved from stone, there are many paintings of St George.  The most remarkable of them all called Bet Georgis, the house of George, is dedicated to St George who is also the patron saint of Ethiopia.  Yes, we share St George with many peoples and many nationalities.  As Fortunatus said, his “honour strews the whole wide world.”   I believe that St George reminds us that Church goes beyond nationality to a deeper and wider generosity so spirit in which there is no stranger and in which there is no foreigner. By who St George is to the world, he reminds that God’s house is a house of prayer for all people.

Secondly by who St George was in himself he is a model for us.  George grew up in faith, and although he was baptized as an enfant, he found his true self in Jesus, his personal savior and his Christ.  He could not; he would not compromise his faith.  The Joy of Easter strengthened him to sacrifice the life he found in Christ.  That is the power of the resurrection: that the grain of wheat must fall to the ground and die to be born again.

If we are to return to God, and find our true selves in him we must follow George’s journey.  We must follow the path that George walked.  The path leads through the center of our own souls.  For George achieved his human wholeness in Christ Jesus, and in Christ found the power to give that wholeness up and even to die to it.  George found his true center remained at all costs in being open to relationship with the One who is so eternally and abundantly alive that he tramples down death by life and can even snatch life out of death.  Like George we must pass through the center of our souls and find our lives ultimately by losing them.  This is the distinguishing mark of the Christian way.

Lord God, today we celebrate your holy witness George.  Through his intercession give us the grace to be strong and brave, innocent and unafraid.