Sermon Hollowell 1 August 1999
“A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves….”  
There are certain passages in the Bible and in literature, which resonate, to use the jargon, with many people and which evoke certain feelings. 
“Five smooth stones out of the brook”  - the triumph of the weak over the strong in the story of David & Goliath  
“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times”.  Who said that? No, madam, it was not John Prescott. It was Mr Dickens, Mr Charles Dickens.  But it is a passage everyone thinks they ought to know.  The gallantry of a Sydney Carton in a Tale of Two Cities.
“For this my son was dead and is alive again”  - forgiveness
 
Along with the Prodigal Son I suppose that Christ’s story of the Good Samaritan recounted in St. Luke’s Gospel is probably the best-known parable in the Bible. 
Wearing my St. John Ambulance hat, literally on occasions, I must have heard this passage read half a dozen times this year in churches  – and I read it once myself - at events commemorating the 900th Anniversary of the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders and the Foundation of the Order of St. John in 1099.  
So I thought that to day we might think a little about the influence of that story on Christian civilisation and on our lives to day.  The idea of loving one’s neighbour as oneself is central to Christian thought. And nowhere in the gospels is that idea more colourfully illustrated than in the story of the Good Samaritan – parable: an earthly story, we were always taught at school with a Heavenly meaning.  
The Hospitallers in Jerusalem 900 years ago, were among the first Christians to dedicate themselves to the healing of the sick “Our masters the sick” is still very much part of the ethos of St. John Ambulance.  And what they were doing and continued to do in various ways down to those people on the touchlines at football matches to-day is surely very much influenced by that Good Samaritan and by the concept of chivalry.
When I enrol Cadets and Badgers into the family of St. John we used a standard set of words, which incorporates a Code of Chivalry. It is a difficult concept in many ways, which at first glance may not appear to have much relevance to day. But it lay at the heart of many people believed in the eleventh and succeeding centuries. 
A parable, it may even be a true story, lies in a French poem of the thirteenth century.
According to this a Christian Crusader knight, one Hugh Count of Tiberias, was captured by the Saracen leader Saladin Richard the Lion Heart’s principal adversary.
Out of respect for Hugh’s valour Saladin agreed to release him if he would fulfil one particular and peculiar request.  This is that he should show Saladin the manner in which Christian knights were made.
Rather than face long years of imprisonment whist he tired to raise his ransom, Hugh reluctantly agrees.                                                  
First he dressed Saladin’s beard and hair
Then he brought him to a bath of courtesy and bounty, which should recall to you the baptism of a child, for you, must come out of it as clean of sin as the infant from the font.
Then he brought him to a fair bed, to signify the repose of paradise, which is what every knight must strive to win by his chivalry;
Raising Saladin he then dressed him in a white robe signifying the cleanness of the body and a scarlet cloak, a reminder of the knight’s duty to be ready to shed his blood in defence of God’s church.
Then he drew on brown stockings, to remind him of the earth to which he must return in the end and to prepare in life for death;
After that he bound Saladin’s waist with a white belt, signifying virginity and that he should hold back lust;
Then came gold spurs, showing that knights must be as swift as the pricked charger to follow God’s commands;
Last he girded on him a two edged sword to remind the new knight that justice and loyalty must go together
He then gave him for commandments for life: 
- Not to consent to false judgement or be a party in any way to treason
honour all women and damsels
Hear a mass every day
Fast on Friday in memory of Our Lord’s passion
The interesting thing about this poem is that whilst the ritual is a Christian ritual, and Chivalry is show as the way to Christian salvation, the ritual is a secular ritual.  No priest was involved.  The evidence is that a great many men did go through a similar ritual to become knights. 
The poem has a happy ending because Salad in sends Hugh home with the price of his ransom advanced from the Sultan’s own treasury.
Well, we live in different times. The mediaeval ideas of chivalry are no longer in vogue. Damsels in distress?  Controlling lust? In these days of the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Pill those concepts do not resonate.
We no longer pray for the whole state of Christ’s church militant here on earth. 
 
My purpose in trying to define the meaning of chivalry as it was originally conceived for our Badgers and Cadets in St. John is to remind them and me that we are the heirs of these knights of old and that by joining an organisation like the St. John Ambulance they are continuing a tradition in a different modern context which dates back 900 years and beyond to that road from Jerusalem to Jericho.  As the speaker on Thought for The Day said yesterday when talking that long forgotten Lammas Sunday, the part that Christian values played and still in our daily lives is very much something worth thinking about and, in my view, acting upon to the best of our abilities.    
