FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Amos 8:4-7

Psalm 113

1 Timothy 2:1-7

Luke 16:1-13

Prayer of the Day: God among us, we gather in the name of your Son to learn love for one another. Keep our feet from evil paths. Turn our minds to your wisdom and our hearts to the grace revealed in your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.” Amos 8:7.

This week Charlie Kirk, a nationally known Trump supporter and “influencer,” was violently, heartlessly and tragically shot to death while addressing a group of students by an assassin, whose memory I will not dignify by naming him. Politicians and talking heads all over the country are blaming this despicable act on “political polarization,” “extremism” and “overheated rhetoric.” We all need to calm down, they tell us. They have a point. A little restraint would be helpful. But the simple truth is that Mr. Kirk was killed as a result of America’s idolatrous love affair with guns and our belief that, when all is said and done, it is the gun that stands as a final defense against our fear of our government, our neighbors and our conspiracy nightmares. The fatal attack on Charlie Kirk occurred because the gun industry, playing on this demented paranoia, has fought tirelessly to ensure that everyone who wants a gun can get one. Yes, people kill people. But Mr. Kirk’s assassin could not have succeeded in committing his crime without the high-powered, bolt-action rifle he was obviously able to obtain with ease. Note well that the NRA classifies this gun as a military grade weapon. I have covered this ground before in my article entitled, “Our Real Problem with Gun Violence-It’s as American as Apple Pie and as Addictive as Crack Cocaine.” Though I wrote that article following the Las Vegas massacre in 2017, nothing has changed since then. Thus, I have been spared the necessity of updating it.

For a number of reasons, Charlie Kirk’s murder was tragic. First, he was the husband and father of two small children who are no doubt devastated by his sudden erasure from their lives. Second, his death will only strengthen and solidify the growing belief that dialogue, debate and reasoned arguments are futile and that our differences, political and otherwise, cannot be resolved without violence or the threat thereof. Finally, and more significant than anything else, Mr. Kirk’s killing is tragic because it ended once and for all every opportunity for change, growth, maturation, wisdom and reconciliation that come with age and experience. His truncated life left behind a sorry legacy of racism, homophobia and misogyny with no hope of redemption. Charlie Kirk is not and never will be a hero, positive role model or martyr for any worthy cause.

Charlie Kirk was no friend of civil rights. He is known to have said the passage of the civil rights act was a mistake. He said that “Martin Luther King, Jr. was awful. He’s not a good person.”Mr. Kirk claimed that Black Americans were better off under Jim Crow than they are today. Additionally, he said on his radio show that Black women “do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.” Following the tragic January collision between an American Airlines plane and a Black Hawk Army helicopter, Kirk remarked, “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’” He supported the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory claiming non-white illegal immigrants are being smuggled into the country by liberals to diminish the white race in America.

Ironically, Kirk said of gun violence “I think it’s worth … some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.” Columbine, Sandy Hook, Marjory Stoneman Douglas are the price we must accept for the right to bear military grade weapons. I wonder whether his family is feeling the same way these days. Would they say, as did he, “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that does a lot of damage.” Does anyone really think Charie’s wife and children blithely accept his death as a needed sacrifice to the Second Amendment? Somehow, I doubt it. Kirk’s disparagement of LGBTQ+ folk is well known. He has suggested that gay men ought, in accordance with biblical teaching, to be stoned. He has frequently ridiculed transgender persons, comparing them to white racists using “black face.” These are all well documented remarks that even the most creative efforts at “contextualizing” cannot redeem.[1]   

No amount of fanatical eulogizing, no flags hung at half-mast and no medal bestowed by the White House will ever erase this ugly bequest of bigotry and hate Mr. Kirk has left in his wake or wash away the shame of a nation that lionizes it. As the prophet Amos warns us in this Sunday’s lesson: “The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.” Amos 8:7. Neither, I believe, will history.

As everyone who follows me knows, I am a Christological pacifist. That is to say, my pacifism is not grounded in any belief that it constitutes an effective political strategy or a potent tool for social change. I am a pacifist because I believe in a messiah who would not allow his followers to employ violence to defend him from an illegal arrest, a rigged prosecution and an unjust execution. I am a pacifist because I follow a messiah who refused to count anyone beyond redemption. I am a pacifist because I learned from Saint Paul, the religious fanatic who took part in a lynching and yet became the apostle who brought the gospel of Jesus Christ to the nations, that human hearts are capable of transformation. Each human life, even the most depraved, is an unfinished book in whose subsequent chapters the Spirit of God might yet make a redemptive appearance. It is therefore quite beyond our capacity to determine which lives are worth saving; which can be written off as collateral damage; which lives are so fulsome that they merit extermination; and which must be saved at all cost. The only one entitled to take life is the One who gives it-and will take it from all of us one time or another.

Moreover, as a good friend once reminded me, nobody is ever only one thing. In addition to being a peddler of hateful ideology, Charlie Kirk was a husband and father. He was the member of a faith community and a friend to many people who loved him for reasons having nothing to do with his opinions. A single bullet makes a bigger hole than the one taking the life of its target. That is why the “just war” prohibition against killing civilians is a fallacy. The “combatants” killed have mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, children, lovers and spouses, friends and colleagues. The death of one person creates a rip in the fabric of a whole community of others. There is no such thing as a surgical strike when it comes to the use of lethal force. That is why Jesus forbids his disciples from employing it-even in what seems to be a just cause.

For that reason, I pray for Charlie Kirk’s bereaved family, for those who knew him as a friend and those who received from him a measure of kindness. I pray that his senseless killing will not unleash more violence. As for Charlie Kirk himself, I grieve the lost opportunities for the Spirit of God to work the miracles of repentance and sanctification in the years stolen from him. May God have mercy on his soul.   

Here is a poem by Wilfred Owens reflecting the enormity and cost of armed conflict. The same price is extracted for every act of lethal violence, including the murder of Charlie Kirk.

Anthem for Doomed Youth

Source: The Poems of Wilfred Owen, edited by Jon Stallworthy (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1986). Wilfred Owen (1893–1918) was an English poet and soldier. He was one of the leading poets of the First World War. His war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was much influenced by his mentor, Siegfried Sassoon, and stood in contrast to the public perception of war at the time and to the confidently patriotic verse written by other war poets such as Rupert Brooke. Owen enlisted with the British armed forces in 1915 and fought in the First World War during which he was seriously wounded. His experiences inspired several poems graphically portraying the horrors of war. Upon recovering, he returned to the front, though he might have honorably remained at home. His decision was motivated less by patriotism than his passion for unmasking the grusome realities of the war. Owen was killed in action in the fall of 1918, just one week before the Armistice. You can read more about Wilfred Owen and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

---

[1] “What were Charlie Kirk’s most controversial statements?” The Standard; “If You’re Wondering What Charlie Kirk Believed In, Here Are 14 Real Quotes,” BuzzFeed, September 11, 2025.