The River of Transformation

September 27, 2026

St. John’s Pentecost 18

THE RIVER OF TRANSFORMATION

The St. John the Baptist community acknowledges that we stand on unceded Dakota land, and we commit to ongoing work to mitigate this injustice.

A Prayer for Immigrants and Migrants

God of Exodus and Refuge, you guided a young, undocumented, brown-skinned Jesus across borders under the cover of night,

Jesus, you experienced the journey of the displaced. You know what it means to flee violence, to seek safety on foreign soil, and to carry the dignity of a human soul when the world closes its doors. Holy Spirit, we listen this day for your call with both heavy and hopeful hearts.

Amen

 

The pre–Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus is remembered for a logical image that has endured for twenty-five centuries: you cannot step into the same river twice. In the river the water is always flowing, changing, Heraclitus suggests the only constant is change itself.

Life is like that. Loss changes us. Love changes us. What we learn from the people we encounter change us. Change is unavoidable. Heraclitus argued that different waters are always flowing through the same river.

Perhaps faith is like that. We remain ourselves, held within the faithfulness of God, while the waters around us—and within us—are continually changing.

That is one way to understand faith. not as a destination but a process. The Holy Spirit still speaking. We are listening, being called, renewed, formed, and sent.

Last week John left us in a vineyard, reminding us that it is never too late to be welcomed into the work. This week Jesus brings us back to the vineyard with a different question. John explicitly preached that belonging alone is not community; community means accepting obligations and giving something of ourselves.

Now that we know we belong, will we go?

Jesus tells a simple story. A father says to his son, “Go and work in the vineyard today.” The son’s immediate answer is no.

There are times that we feel confronted, frightened, challenged about our believes, or asked more than we want or are capable to give. Our Reponses can be reactive: flee, freeze, fight. No. I cannot. I will not. We can react without thinking, praying, discerning.

The problem is not that we have an initial reaction. The deeper spiritual question is whether our first response becomes our final response.

Jesus shares that later the son changed his mind and went into the vineyard to work.

There is an entire spiritual process hidden inside that word: later. Between “I will not” and in good time walking into the vineyard is the sacred space where we stop, listen, pray, and discern.

John’s late workers show that it is never too late to enter the vineyard; the first son shows that it is never too late to change your mind and go

Changing our minds is sometimes regarded as weakness. We admire certainty. Yet there are times when one of the most faithful things we can say is no: we are not certain, we do not understand. We are not listening.

And then we changed my mind, we listened to a friend, we prayed.

Our process and past matters. Our choices have consequences. But they need not have the last word about who we are becoming.

Ezekiel speaks directly to that possibility. The people repeat the proverb, “When parents eat unripe grapes, the children’s teeth suffer.” It is a way of saying that what has been determines what will be—that our ancestor’s history, controls our future.

God however interrupts that fatalism: “All lives are mine.” And then comes the invitation: “Make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit.… Change your ways, and live!”

There is spiritual wisdom in that cycle. Discernment does not necessarily end when a decision is made. We listen. We pray. We act. We make the best faithful decision we can. And we keep listening.

Do our decisions bring greater life and justice? Who was helped, who was harmed, and what did we learn? If what we learn calls us to change yet again, then we change—not necessarily because discernment failed, but because discernment is still happening.

The father asks the second son to go into the vineyard, and the second son gives exactly the right answer: “I go, sir.” It sounds obedient. It sounds faithful.

There is a problem: he does not go.

That makes Jesus’ little parable uncomfortable for the beloved community. We know how to say yes. Yes, we believe in justice. Yes, every human being bears the image of God. Yes, immigrants and refugees are our neighbors. Yes, everyone belongs. In our Baptismal Covenant we promise to strive for justice and peace and respect the dignity of every human being.

Jesus asks: Did you go into the vineyard?

And that question becomes uncomfortable in our political moment. We are living at a time when fear of immigrants is politically useful, when the dignity of our immigrant neighbors is increasingly contested, and when white Christian nationalism wraps racist political power in Christian language. Christian nationalism does not reflect the ministry of Jesus.

So, we ask: when political power uses the language of Christianity, what fruit does that authority actually bear? Does it produce mercy? Does it produce justice? Does it honor the dignity of every human being? Does it teach us to fear the neighbor Jesus commands us to love?

Ezekiel’s sour grapes remind us that every generation inherits a vineyard it did not plant. We inherit histories, institutions, prejudices, wounds, and ways of seeing. We may not be guilty of planting them, but we become responsible for what we cultivate.

We have a haunting image of fruit in our American story. In Abel Meeropol’s Strange Fruit, made unforgettable by Billie Holiday, lynched Black bodies become the terrible fruit of or history in which there is “blood on the leaves and blood at the root.”

The Episcopal Church confesses its role “in the irreparable harm suffered by slavery, doctrine of discovery, and Indigenous children who forcibly attended boarding and residential schools in the 1800s and 1900s, some within ECMN, and we acknowledge that the effect of that harm carries on in boarding school survivors and their descendants.”

I am not suggesting we equate the particular horror of lynching, or genocide, or indigenous children’s boarding schools, with every injustice. But Ezekiel’s prophetic truth remains, that which lies hidden in the roots will eventually appear in the fruit.

Fear bears’ fruit. Racism bears fruit. Dehumanizing language bears fruit. Religion joined to political power bears’ fruit.

What kind of crop are we producing now?

Perhaps that is why Ezekiel refuses to let Israel remain trapped in the sour grapes of the past. God says, “Get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit.” And then comes the invitation: “Turn, then, and live.”

We cannot change the grapes our ancestors ate. But we can decide what we will cultivate now. We can ask whether we are brave enough to share our story of faith, pushing back against the distortions that surround us.

Migration with Dignity, justice and restoration with indigenous peoples are the vineyards before us. We pray and gather together with our neighbors. We tend the vineyard: accompanying, advocating, protecting, speaking, showing up.

We need not resolve the questions of what have we inherited? Our question is: What fruit are we growing for those who come after us?

Jesus does not ask us “Did you agree with me?”

Rather It is: Did you go? Did you seek and serve? Faithfulness is not measured by the volume of our affirmation. It is measured by what our actions become.

We rightly proclaim the Resurrection of Jesus as the heart of our faith. But resurrection is not merely an event we remember. It is also a practice into which we are invited.

Something dies; something opens; something we thought was finished becomes capable of new life—a certainty that kept us from listening, a fear that kept us frozen, a prejudice we finally recognize.

Grace opens possibility: in good time, the son changed his mind. Perhaps that is one of the smallest resurrection stories in Scripture. His refusal does not get the last word. Something new emerges, and the son gets up and goes into the vineyard.

Will we learn to pause between reaction and action? Are we open to allow our personal experiences to teach us? Can we allow God to manifest within us a new heart and a new spirit? Faith is not a destination. It is a river running through us.

Jesus does not leave us with the question, have you gotten everything right? Jesus asks are you willing to be transformed, will you work out your own salvation?

The river is still moving. God is still speaking. Christ is still calling. We are still being formed. And there is still a vineyard waiting for us, whenever we show up.

 

Amen

 

Invitation to the confession

Let us remember before God the Indigenous children who were taken from their families and communities and placed in residential and boarding schools in Minnesota, Canada and the United States; those who died far from home, and those who survived and continue to carry the wounds of what they endured.

We confess our failure to protect the dignity and sacredness of every child, and to confront the systems and silences that allow harm to continue.

Trusting in the mercy of God and acknowledging both the sins of the past and the ways their consequences remain among us, let us confess our sins against God and our neighbor.

 

10am Service