st george

Today is the Eve of St George - yes before you comment I know that his day is usually 23rd April but not this year.....it has been moved to tomorrow because and here is the tricky bit - despite the fact that every English School child knows the correct date for their patron saint - this year 23rd April was Holy Saturday and so George - who is not a major saint got bumped - Monday 2nd May is the first available day to place him.
Despite the vagueries of the Church calendar George is an interesting character. There have been many arguments over recent years over whether he existed and if he did what of the story we attribute to him is true. The story of George and the Dragon is a little bit to swashbuckling for us to take it too seriously in our modern age, but that is a relatively recent phenomenon - we do not believe there were dragons and so he could not have killed on - as my older children would say - end of.
If George did exist he was almost certainly from the middle east - Syria perhaps. We simply do not know whether he stood up for Christianity to a pagan emporer and died for his faith. But that is the way of hagiography - legends and stories have combined with history over the ages and even the most respected of saints can, apparently, be credited with strange happenings and habits.
Perhaps, instead of picking apart George, although I do have sympathy with those who would put a much more straight forward saint Aidan in his place, we should think about what he represents for us. I read an article in the Guardian which suggested that Doctor Who would make a much more suitable Patron for England - quintessentially English, somewhat quaint, an outsider and fighting the enemy. This is an interesting suggestion but, misses the point, The same article also misses the mark when it describes the Church of England as the home of private religion.
Surely we have a patron saint not because we want to figure out what he had for breakfast on Wednesday - which is my way of asking how historically accurate we want our saint to be - but rather because George, at least historically, is someone who will risk his life for the good of others and ultimately lay it down for Christ. Doctor Who has this last element somewhat missing from the storyline.
We have a Saint who is a reputed Martyr and a cross on the English flag because someone at some time (before the Victorians) thought that Christians and Christianity were worth sharing - not as some sort of personal sentimentality but as something which really mattered and should matter. This is a big question for Evening Prayer - but are we willing to take on what our flag and our patron Saint might really mean - that we are not just a tea and cake church but something a little bit better - a little bit bigger - a church of people who really believe that the cross means something and can transform us, as it did the disciples, from an inward looking squabbling group of individuals into the body of Christ.
Perhaps the Church of England is being a little too quiet, and a little too nice if people feel sentimentally attached to us - George should represent to us, not the fairy tale of brave salvation - but the reality of Christ's salvation worked out in human lives - in our lives. There is little sentimental in that. Unlike the writer in the Guardian who wanted Henry IV to shout - Cry God for Harry, England and the Doctor I would prefer Cry God for England, her people and perhaps even St. George.