St George’s Day – Parade service talk idea

On your marks

When the church is full of Guides and Scouts, you may want to involve them in a short punchy talk. This takes the theme of the fight against injustice: you might want to have some examples of local battles against injustice to include in the talk.

Get set

You’ll need costumes, a dragon puppet or cuddly toy (optional), a St George’s flag, a picture of a traditional St George.

Go!

1 You’ll all know the legend of St George.
Act this out with volunteers wearing as many bits of costume as you can muster. Encourage them to ham it up and overact as much as they can

George was noble brave and heroic, muscular, goodlooking and hunky. One day a messenger came to him in deep distress, saying that the kingdom was being ravaged by a terrible fire-breathing dragon. This ferocious beast was demanding beautiful maidens to eat and the drop-dead gorgeous princess was at this very moment being chained up and taken off to become dragon’s dinner.

George was horrified. Pulling on his helmet and seizing his sword and spear, he leapt upon his snow-white horse and charged off to do battle with the vile monster. Arriving in the nick of time, as the languishing princess was about to be gobbled up, George heroically battled with the dragon, slew it and rescued the princess, who no doubt fell desperately in love with him and they all lived happily ever after.

2 Of course, nobody really knows who the real St George was. Some say he was born in Turkey in the third century A.D and that his parents were Christians. He may have become a Roman soldier and is supposed to have spoken out against the way the Roman Empire persecuted Christians. For this he was imprisoned and tortured but stayed true to his faith until he was beheaded in Palestine.

3 The two stories sound very different: the dragon one is far more exciting. But both have the same theme: a man who couldn’t put up with injustice and bravely put himself forward to do something about it.

4 Let’s replay the legend of St George with a difference.

Act the story out again

George was noble brave and heroic, muscular, goodlooking and hunky. One day a messenger came to him in deep distress, saying that the kingdom was being ravaged by a terrible fire-breathing dragon. This ferocious beast was demanding beautiful maidens to eat and the drop-dead gorgeous princess was at this very moment being chained up and taken off to become dragon’s dinner. George was… rather busy that day. There was so much on telly he wanted to watch and he’d just got to a difficult point in his adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. He also couldn’t see that the princess’s problems were any of his business, and he was quite sure that if he just kept his head down, somebody else would nip off and sort out the dragon. Basically, George couldn’t be bothered. So George, hunky, muscular, brave and heroic George, scoffed a Mars Bar and settled down in front of ‘My Parents are Aliens’…

And the dragon…. (encourage the dragon to eat the princess)

5 When we see injustice all around us, we have a choice. The Bible says, ‘People who love the Lord hate evil’. (Psalm 97:10). We can leave the fight to someone else or we can speak out against what is wrong, whether that’s at school, at home or in the wider world.

6 Perhaps we should all keep a St George’s flag nearby to remind us that, as we’ve just celebrated at Eastertime, Jesus himself never put up with evil but even gave up his life on the cross to deal with it. I wonder what injustice you can fight against in your Scout and Guide groups?