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Karen Hollis | September 28, 2025 Pentecost 16
Galatians 3:23-29 Before the way of faith in Christ was available to us, we were placed under guard by the law. We were kept in protective custody, so to speak, until the way of faith was revealed. Let me put it another way. The law was our guardian until Christ came; it protected us until we could be made right with God through faith. And now that the way of faith has come, we no longer need the law as our guardian.
For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be reflections of your word to us today, in Christ’s name we pray. Amen
This text begins with the Law . . . but if you recall, Law in a Jewish context is a little different. The Hebrew word for Law, halakhah, means “go” or “walk.” So it is the “way” a Jew is directed to behave in every aspect of life, encompassing civil, criminal, and religious law.
The foundation of the Law is the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible OR the Five Books of Moses). “Torah” means “instruction” or “teaching.” According to their tradition, Moses received the Torah from God at Mount Sinai. As we know, Moses would go up the mountain and sit with God, receiving their instructions, directives, statutes, laws, and rules to help the Israelites live well together, with the land, and with God.
This is not the only Law the Jewish people have been concerned with. For much of their history they have either been occupied or exiled, so they are not only bound by Jewish Law (which is available to them wherever they are). They are also bound by the Law of the Land, the law of the place where they find themselves. This is not a distinction most of us think about, but I think it makes sense.
Here in BC, all of us, Jews and Gentiles alike, are subject to Canadian/BC law, which tells us about our rights and freedoms, the rules of the road, regulations of owning property, and includes the treaties of the past and present.
These treaties point to another layer of law that we’re all still waking up to, that includes indigenous understandings of Aboriginal title, traditional territories, social structures, political and legal systems . . . and a mutual relationship with the land.
My research into Aboriginal title showed me that those who first settled this land were apparently unaware of treaties – what was and was not agreed to. The descendants of these settlers have not only been equally unaware, we were taught only the colonizer story. We have inherited this layering of systems and structures, where the colonized laws rule, and the traditional systems still remain largely veiled. Even so, there are Indigenous knowledge keepers, who can tell us the understanding of those original treaties that have been passed down and how the truth in the stories continues to live in them.1
On so many levels, relationships between Indigenous and non-indigenous people have not unfolded in a good way. What we have inherited is heartbreaking. And I know we struggle to know what to do with it. Do Indigenous people blame us? Do they hate us? We didn’t do those things.
Yeah, it’s tough. Let’s take a breath for a moment and distinguish between blame and responsibility. We are not to blame or at fault for what happened here. We have inherited it. So, what is our responsibility as inheritors of injustice? As citizens of this country, as residents of this place, we are responsible for what happens next.
Now we are learning the truth about it, opening ourselves to the implications of those truths. We are beginning to orient ourselves toward participating in reconciliation, and we will continue to do so. We will respond in the best way we know how, while continuing to learn better ways until the end of our days.
There is always learning to do. Here's a lesson for us today that is lovely and gentle and will lead us back to our scripture reading.
During my study leave, I was reading a book called Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview by Randy Woodley. He tells of a time when he and his wife were invited to the Ojibwa reservation near Hayward, Wisconsin to teach an Indigenous Leadership course. When they arrived, he asked, as he always does, “Who welcomed you on the land?” It is important to Woodley that things happen in a good way, by connecting with the traditional caretakers, who decide what happens on the land. “Unfortunately, no one had really invited [the organizers] on the land.” So, he told them they couldn’t speak unless the host people welcomed them somehow.2
So, they figured out who the elder was, went to the store and made “a traditional elder basket that consisted of flour and tobacco, a flashlight and coat hangers, sugar and coffee, fresh fruit, and all the kinds of things elders like.” When they brought the basket to the elder’s home, he greeted them, asking “who are you and what do you want?”3 Clear and to the point.
Woodley explained: we’re “going to be teaching on spiritual matters to Indigenous leaders [here] . . . we do things according to our traditional teachings, but we follow Jesus.”4
The elder then started telling some interesting stories about his curiosity with Christianity. For a couple of hours he told stories of Bible college and Ojibwa spiritual leader meetings about how to get along better with Christians . . . along the way, he would periodically interrupt his own story to say, “You know, my uncle told me to never disrespect Jesus, because Jesus is a great spirit and I talk to him.” He told them over and over again, eventually adding that this is how his uncle learned about Jesus . . . by talking to Jesus and listening when Jesus talked back!
Jesus casts his teaching wide. A friend of mine says Jesus will use any means available to connect with us. It’s not about the church, it’s not about doctrine, it’s about relationship . . . a personal one, made ever more beautiful when affirmed in baptism. While, in Paul’s words, Jewish Law offered protection before the way of Jesus was available to us, Jesus offers to the world his way liberation and connection.
Regardless of who we are or where we are on life’s journey, Paul sees in all of us a need for liberation. What do we need to be liberated from? A great many things, I’m sure, but in the context of reconciliation, aren’t we, non-indigenous people, equally bound by colonization as our Indigenous neighbours? We may benefit more from the system . . . . we’re still bound by it. We can hardly see it, we’re so wrapped up in it, all the while the land suffers and we suffer from this perpetual need for progress and results. Perhaps in this place there is simply a population in need of liberation. Liberation that brings healing from residential school, healing for the land, and healing for our souls. Healing that makes room for ways of living that supports life for all, that turns the interconnected wheel of creation.
I feel this more now than I ever have. I’ve been preparing these little history lessons each week, I’ve read books like Braiding Sweetgrass, Queer Indigenous poetry, Harold Johnson’s book about Story . . . the more I learn about the world that existed here before contact, the more I learn about residential schools, about doing things in a good way . . . the more I open myself to what has been lost and what needs to be healed. Some days I open myself to my own grief and the collective grief – it’s really painful. I was telling a colleague the other day – I don’t know what to do with this grief or where to process it, except to just cry. He said, that’s a good place to start.
I ultimately think this grief is a good sign, even if I don’t know what to do with it or where it will lead. My prayer is that we continue walking the way Jesus leads. He knows that the only way forward is through . . . and he greets us with a peace that is courageous and vulnerable and healing. The path of Jesus is God’s way of life, death, and resurrection. Jesus has walked this path before us and accompanies us as one who knows a way that brings unity between humans of the world. Thanks be to God.
1 https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/aboriginal_title/ Sept 27, 2025
2 Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview p. 10
3 Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview p. 10
4 Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview p. 10