Reflection 18th January 2026.  Second Sunday of Epiphany 

“Held in Grace, Called Together” 

By Rev. Dr. Fei Taule’ale’ausumai 

As some of you may be aware one of our staff here in our Community Centre is Sara from Iran.  Over the last week since the turmoil and uprising in Tehran she spent many days not knowing whether her immediate family were safe.  She has a sister in Tehran, and her parents are in another city.  Fortunately, her husband’s brother also contacted them to say that they were all safe and ok.  Sadly, the whole country went into black out deliberately instigated by the government.  Early news reports on our local TVNZ said that there were approximately 300 people killed, whereas it was more that 3,000 at the time.  The total feared dead at the time of writing on Friday afternoon is feared to be over 12,000. 

So, it seems appropriate that our theme this morning is “held in grace”.  Grace being something that we do not have to work towards or earn.  It is freely given and available.  For us as the Community of St. Andrew’s on the Terrace we will continue to keep Sara and her family and the nation of Iran in our thoughts and prayers.   

For me as the great aunt to 14.5 nieces and nephews we have been held in Grace as our 5-year-old baby girl Viola, underwent treatment and tests for her rheumatic fever.  Thank God she was discharged on Thursday and is now at home.  As a family we fasted and prayed as we were held in grace by a faithful God.   

There are moments in life and in faith when what sustains us is not certainty, not success, not even clarity, but the quiet, truth that we are held and sustained by the grace of God. 

It’s nice to know that we are held when things make sense and when they don’t.  Even when our best efforts feel fragile, unfinished, or fruitless. 

Both our lectionary readings speak into communities who are unsure of themselves, communities wondering whether their calling still holds, whether grace is still operative, whether God is still at work in and through them.   

Isaiah 49 emerges from the experience of exile. Israel is a people who feel forgotten, diminished, unsure of their place in the world.  

1 Corinthians 1, by contrast, addresses a community living at the centre of empire—in a wealthy, competitive, status-driven city. Yet despite their prosperity, the Corinthian church is deeply insecure: divided by leadership loyalties, anxious about wisdom, power, and belonging. 

Both texts speak to communities struggling to understand who they are and why they exist. 

And both texts say, in different ways.  You are held in grace. And you are called together. 

Our Hebrew text from Isaiah 49 comes from the heart of exile.  It belongs to what scholars commonly call Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40–55), a section of the book addressed to the Judean community in exile in Babylon during the mid-6th century BCE (c. 550–539 BCE). 

The people of Judah are living in Babylon displaced, disoriented, stripped of land, temple, and certainty. These are not triumphant believers. These are people asking deep questions.  Questions about have we failed God or has God forgotten us?  Does our calling still matter?  And it is into that space, the servant speaks not with bravado, but with honesty: 

“God called me before I was born yet I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing.”  This is not the voice of shallow faith.  This is the voice of someone who has tried to be faithful and is tired (hmmm probably sounds familiar to many of us gathered here this morning, where has our faithfulness got us?”  Why bother having faith, my friend still died, my father was not healed, my child still has rheumatic fever?    And yet the servant does not deny the exhaustion.  At the end of the day “faith” is faith.  It’s a mystery.  Prayers and the answer to our personal prayers are not always answered in the way we would like?  Sometimes, what happens is the exact opposite of what we were hoping for.  We know the voice of someone who has tried to be faithful and is tired.  Here, the lament is not silenced or spiritualised away. Instead, it is held within a larger trust, “yet surely my cause is with God.” 

This is grace before accomplishment, calling before success.  belonging before outcome.  But in the context of this reading God does not reprimand the servant for feeling weary. By saying try harder. Instead, God widens the vision. “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob.  I will give you as a light to the nations.” 

In other words:  Your calling was never only about survival.  Your restoration is not just for yourselves.  Even in exile especially in exile God is still about connection, healing, and light for others.  No matter how dire our situations and circumstances, it is often in the depth of despair that our epiphany occurs, clarity often comes when the only way is up because you have hit rock bottom.  Many of us have been there if we are to be honest with ourselves.   

In a similar fashion our reading from 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verses 1-9 are Paul’s opening words to the church in Corinth.  This is a fractured community.  Divided by status, theology, personality, and power.  Corinth was already a church pulling itself apart.   It was culturally diverse (Romans, Greeks, Jews, freed slaves, migrants) It was Economically unequal (great wealth alongside deep poverty), and it was also Religiously plural (temples to many gods, imperial cult, mystery religions) 

And yet Paul begins, not with correction, but with grounding: “Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ.” 

Before Paul addresses their problems, he reminds them who they are:  Called to belong to Christ.  Enriched in speech and knowledge.  Not lacking in any spiritual gift and perhaps most importantly that in the midst of all this God is faithful.  They are “held by Grace”.  Likewise for the people in Isaiah, Corinth and here in St. Andrew’s on the Terrace, grace is not the reward for spiritual maturity.  Grace is the ground beneath communities that struggle through life. 

Isaiah names exhaustion and Paul names imperfection.  Neither denies reality.  But both insist: God’s faithfulness comes first.  We are not held because we get it right.  We are held because God is faithful. 

This is a deep theological claim.  It resists a performance-based faith, exclusionary belonging or the idea that usefulness equals worth.  At the end of the day Grace is not a reward for doing what is right, it is not something given with conditions, Grace is unconditional and not something you earn it is freely given.   

Our uniqueness as an urban city church based in the heart of Wellington central city close to Parliament means that our work or our calling as a church is a shared vocation.  We are “called together”.  Like Isaiah’s servant is called for others.   

Calling is never solitary.  We are called into relationship with one another and also into community and into responsibility for one another and the world.  This is especially important in a time when many of us feel tired, smaller, or uncertain of our future. 

I guess in a nutshell, our text from Isaiah reminds us that God often does God’s most expansive work through people and communities that feel diminished.  And that our reading from Corinthians reminds us that unity does not mean uniformity it means staying at the table together, held by grace. 

I am reminded of one of my favorite short verses from the book of Esther “for Such a Time as this”.  In our own context where many of us carry fatigue, grief, questions about relevance, and our future health and wholeness, these texts speak gently but firmly to us that we are not forgotten.  That we are not failing because things are changing.  And that we are not finished because we are weary or because we happen to be turning 65 on 1st March.  30 years ago, I probably would have had to finish.  30 years ago, I would have been required to retire at 60, way before my time.  But as the saying goes “use it or lose it”.   

But I guess the simple message for us this morning is to know that we are held in grace.  That we are called to be a community of justice, mercy and compassion and do it together and that God’s purposes are often wider than we can yet imagine.  Amen. 

Audio of selected readings and reflections

Audio of the complete service