Creation 4 - Year A

'If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.'

It is so good to be here at the Cathedral now. I wanted to thank all of you for the warm welcome that my family and I have received over the last week and a half as we join you here.
As you can imagine, I’ve now begun my ministry here – starting my new job, so to speak, and like with any job, I am currently being on-boarded (isn’t that a strange term?!) I have been connected up to outlook. I have a lovely new email address – two actually! I have been given a huge lot of keys (I only know where about 4 of them work just now!) I’ve got a very complicated list of how bins are collected around here for our flat! The list goes on.
So, as I’m on the rota (I just about know where that is in the office), to preach, I was delighted to see that we have a baptism this morning alongside these fascinating readings.
Our reading from Paul’s letter to the Philippians what I would describe as “classic Paul.” There are various rhetorical styles Paul employs from time to time, and this section in Philippians falls into the category I would call a “pep-talk.”
Over the course of his evangelism, mission and ministry and certainly in his writings, Paul seems to have two primary concerns. The first is continually preaching the truth of the gospel: That Jesus is Lord. That he was God incarnate, lived his life teaching us how to love, died for his love for us and rose again to show us that God’s love is unending. Paul spends the majority of his life writing and preaching the reality that Jesus is lord and loves us.
The other concern Paul devotes a huge amount of time to, though, is the church. The faithful. Those new communities of Christians and their relationships with one another were constantly on his mind. To that end, sometimes, Paul seems more than a bit frustrated. Sometimes he seems eager and loving. And sometimes he gives them, and us, these rousing pep-talks like the one we have today.
In today’s reading, Paul is emphasizing the unity of the church. He goes so far as to say that they should be of one mind.
Now in all of my induction here this last week, though I see how much shared work is happening here, I very much doubt that you are all always of one mind. No doubt there are disagreements – small and large – as to how to follow God in this place. Or even just where to place things and what shape common life should take.
Being church together means bringing a diversity of views, experiences and opinions all together and trying to devote ourselves to a common calling to serve God and our neighbour. So how do we navigate our differences well?
This is where I think Paul’s pep talk in Philippians gives us something quite useful – he urges us to consider the needs of one another first, before our own.
It is interesting that this section from Philippians has long captured the hearts of Christians, with theologians calling it an early Christian hymn, poem or creed. Parts of this text have been found on ancient early Christian amulets, pointing to it tugging at the hearts of Christians even from the start.
What is so special about these words? Interestingly, this text would have been as counter cultural in the context of the early church as it is now. Paul doesn’t say that we should neglect ourselves, but just hold back a bit and seek the common good of one another, intentionally.
In doing so, we model Christ’s self-giving nature and his humility. Paul is not advocating a sort of pious, fake humility; but something deeper, and (I suspect) intensely practical.

The early church was full of hugely diverse communities, with different languages, cultures, different religious backgrounds and even both free people and enslaved people worshipping alongside one another.
This diversity of the early church was a threat to the class system of the roman Empire. Paul, himself, was an embodiment of this diversity as he was a Jew, a Pharisee, a Roman Citizen and then of course a Christian convert.
So here we have these groups of Christians praying together, taking communion together, working alongside one another despite deep chasms of difference- advocating for a very different way of organising common life.
They clearly had a lot of disagreements, about how to worship, how to apply religious customs, the station of women in the church, even what to eat. And Paul seems to try to help them in these disagreements, which were often deeply local and contextual.
But he goes back to the same theme time and time again: Love one another. Uphold one another. Love Christ. Be Christ to each other.
And that is what he is saying to them and to us in this reading. The text reaches from its original writing and hearing and comes to us in 2026 as we navigate living as Christians here and now.
It is so fitting that we are celebrating a baptism today, of beautiful Ivo, because it gives us the opportunity to remember that just like Ivo today, each of us are called into this unending love of God which we know in Christ Jesus.
We are called into a love which is unified not because we always agree, but because we are united in our calling to give ourselves to something far greater.
We are called to love as Christ loves – and we know that his love finds its home in all – as Jesus says in our gospel reading, even in the most marginalised among us.
Christ’s love reaches out across all time, across all boundaries, across every false division, and names each of us as loved. His love calls out to Ivo today, it calls to me, to you, to each of us.
We know this in our shared baptism. In the communion we share. In the thread of God’s love in the beauty of creation and in the self-giving love of neighbour we receive and give.
In each of these moments we can answer the Israelites’ quarrelling that Moses tried to navigate in our Exodus reading where they ask “Is the Lord among us or not?”
Yes, God’s love is here among us, as real as it has ever been, calling us to love and be loved. To put one another first.
So as I join you here at the cathedral, looking forward to many years ahead, I pray that we might all continually come together– remembering that, as Paul says, it is God at work among us. God, the author of the universe, love itself, is at work in each of us individually, but most powerfully together.
And let each of us pray that Ivo may grow up knowing that he is loved – yes by those around him, but also by God, who has great and beautiful things prepared for Ivo in his life, and that Ivo shares that love with those he meets along the way, as well.
'If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.'
Amen.