A Homily for the St Thomas Eve Carol Service-The Living Word

Illumination showing banderoles from Nicolaus de Lyra, Postillae super totam Biblam

A homily given at the St Thomas Eve Carol Service for The Clothworkers' Company at St Olave Hart Street on Wednesday 17th December 2025 at 11.30am. 

One of our better-known parishioners and former Master, Samuel Pepys — whose monument looks down upon us — lived at a moment when technology was beginning to reveal what had previously been invisible. Robert Hooke’s book Micrographia captivated readers with its drawings of insects, grains of pollen, and strands of wool, seen in astonishing detail through the microscope for the first time. Amongst other things, Hooke’s discoveries revolutionised our understanding of fibres and spurred on innovations in textile technology and production. 

 

In Pepys’ day, what had once seemed tiny and insignificant was brought into the light and shown to be worthy of attention.

 

The opening of John’s Gospel, traditionally read at the climax of carol services, makes an even bolder claim. Drawing together Jewish theology and Greek philosophy, it declares that everything began with just a single Word — God’s Word. Through which all things came into being: all that has been, all that is, and all that is to come.

 

Medieval artists seemed to grasp the link between word and being — between the spiritual and the physical — more instinctively than we seem to in our culture today. In their art we see banderoles: ribbon-like scrolls unfurling from the mouths of angels and prophets. A bit like a divine Andrex puppy has been romping around the place! In these images, words take physical form, twisting through the air, bound to the one who speaks them and wrapping around those who hear. In the corner of this church, an early sixteenth-century memorial to John Orgone and his wife Ellyne offers fine examples of these banderiles. Perhaps part of the joy of services like this is the sense – often felt rather than spoken - that we are being wrapped in the songs of those who have gone before us. Woven together by that great cloud of witnesses.

The gospel text goes on to make its most astonishing claim: “The Word became flesh and lived among us.”

The Word did not simply become a physical thing – an object, like a ribbon. It became a human life.

The cosmic God became a tiny baby — vulnerable, dependent and easily overlooked. The gospel writer insists that this tiny infant is the fulfilment of all God’s promises: the light for all people, full of grace and truth.

 

And more than that: God’s word dwells in those who receive him. Like a seed of love scattered across the world, within all people, waiting to grow. That seed has been planted in us all.

 

In our time and culture we have grown so used to separating the physical from the spiritual, to thinking of faith as something that happens only in the head. But for the seed of faith to flourish, it must live in us.

Singing is a great antidote to this way of thinking. Breathing in the word, and sharing it in song is a highly physical act – as many of us found out last Friday when we resurrected the tradition of wassailing here – basically a pub crawl with carols, if the Master will excuse my use of the vernacular. In many parts of the country wassailing was known as ‘A Thomassing’ singing carols door to door around the Feast of St Thomas – this Company’s patron saint - in return for alms. Another good reason why you should all join us next year – on the second Friday in December!

 

The living word of the John’s gospel is not just something to be read or heard. It is to be lived out singing on the streets of the City. It is to be felt. As Jesus felt it. As a physical stirring. You know, when the gospels tell us Jesus was moved with compassion, the literal translation is that his guts were moved with compassion.

 

We feel the living word before we read it. We feel compassion, we sense injustice, before we think about it. And when we think about it we often dismiss our feelings, explaining to ourselves why we cannot respond: we lack the time, the resources, the influence. Our head silences what our gut feels, because we have grown so used to separating the two.

 

To be fully alive to the life Christ reveals is to live the Word not only in the mind, but in the gut — the place where that seed of faith forms compassion and courage within us.

 

When we make space for the Spirit to work in us like this, the word, this tiny seed becomes more than something we hear or read. It becomes something we embody.

 

The living Word — the source of light, truth, and life — becomes flesh in us.

 

Advent is the season when we cry, O come, O come, Emmanuel; when we long for that seed, that Word, to grow within us. To become woven into every fibre of our being.

 

So may we make time to hear the living Word amid the noise of busy lives; to receive him not only with our minds but with our whole selves; and to discover how our lives are transformed when we truly inwardly digest the light, hope, and life he brings.

 

May the living Word be born in each of us this Christmas.

Image: Illumination showing banderoles from Nicolaus de Lyra, Postillae super totam Biblam