My Grandfather used to tell a joke about a young woman sitting with her little boy at the funeral of her husband. The pastor began his sermon by pointing out what a faithful husband, loving parent and fine Christian the deceased husband had been for all his life. As he praised her late husband’s kindness, generosity and faithfulness, the woman turned to her son and whispered, “Honey, slip up there to the front of the church and take a peek into the casket. I just want to be sure it’s really your dad in there. I think we might be at the wrong funeral.”

There is an old Latin adage, De mortuis nil nisi bonum. Roughly translated, it means “about the dead nothing but good is said.” I concur generally with that sentiment. I have presided over more than a few funerals for people whose lives have been-let’s just say complicated. Though a funeral sermon is not a eulogy, it should be a word of grace for those who grieve. The good news is not good news if it does not intersect with the pain of those who loved the departed, in spite of whatever faults and injuries they may have inflicted. So I tend to lift up whatever positive aspects of a life that I can and speak to the power of God to redeem even lives that have gone off the rails. It does no good to dredge up the wrongs of one who is dead and no longer able to answer or make amends for the past.

The memorial service of Charlie Kirk, however, was more than a funeral. It was a televised canonization of Charlie Kirk as a martyr for and champion of conservative values and free speech. Because Kirk was a public figure, because his memorial service was a public event and because the truth matters, we need to set the record straight. First, Charlie Kirk was not a victim of “the radical left,” whatever the hell that means. He was the victim of an angry, maladjusted young man in a culture that celebrates the ease with which anyone can obtain military grade weapons. To date, he has not been connected with any political, religious or ideologically defined group. As I have made clear elsewhere, Kirk’s death was a tragic event-as are the thousands of other needless gun deaths that are hardly thought newsworthy these days. But that does not make him a martyr any more than anyone else shot to death for no good reason.

Second, while we should fully support Charlie Kirk’s right of free speech, we need to condemn in no uncertain terms the irresponsible and malicious use he made of it. Kirk mocked, ridiculed and threatened LGBTQ+ folk with slurs. He claimed that it was the right of the American people to live free of such “freaks” and even suggested, citing a biblical reference from the book of Leviticus, that gay men should be stoned to death. He held Martin Luther King, Jr. in contempt and argued that the Civil Rights Act was a mistake. Moreover, he said on several occasions that Black people were lacking in intelligence and competency. I have documented these and other remarks in my article of September 15, 2025.  If we didn’t know better, the parade of speakers portraying Kirk as a model of civility, open minded dialogue and respect for opposing views might convince us that he was indeed the mythical hero they are trying to make him. But we do know better. Those of us not entirely detached from reality remember all too well his toxic comments and recognize the memorial service as a masterful work of gaslighting.

That brings me to the third observation. I don’t know when the last time was that I saw such a great ocean of white skin under one roof. True, there were some well chosen exceptions on display, Dr. Ben Carson being one. I am sure if you turned over enough rocks in that stadium you might find a few in the audience as well, though why any person of color would want to honor the life of one who thought and spoke of them as unintelligent, incompetent and successful only through the evil mechanics of “DEI” is beyond me. Nobody used the “N” word that night, but it is hardly unknown within Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA. For example, in 2022, after three Black college football players were killed, Meg Miller, then president of Turning Point’s chapter at the University of Missouri, joked in a social media message, “If they would have killed 4 more n-ggers we would have had the whole week off.” In 2017 Turning Point’s national field director, Crystal Canton, sent a text message to her colleague stating: ‘I HATE BLACK PEOPLE. Like f— them all … I hate blacks. End of story.'” So let us stop pretending that “race has nothing to do with it.” Racial hate is a dominant gene in Turning Point USA’s DNA.  

Finally, and most importantly, I am sorry the name of Jesus had to be dragged into this carnival of fanatic hatred. References to Jesus punctuated the proceedings from beginning to end. The most absurd came from the lips of HHS Secretary Robert F, Kennedy Jr. who compared Kirk to Jesus. Tucker Carlson took the stage to give Jesus a decidedly antisemitic spin-not inconsistent with Kirk’s own slurs against Jews but at odds with New Testament witness. The Jesus extoled on the stage hated liberals, LGBTQ+ folk, migrants and every other perceived enemy of that crazed MAGA audience. The one and only Christ like word spoken that night came from the lips of Kirk’s widow, Erika who declared that she had forgiven her husband’s killer.  Strikingly discordant to this small island of grace was the speech of Stephen Miller shrieking that “leftists,” “are nothing.” More perplexing still was Donald Trump’s full throated defense of his hatred for the “radical left” that drew nary a protest from all these Jesus loving folks. I don’t know who this Jesus was who the crowd gathered in the State Farm Stadium kept invoking that day, but he clearly was not the one we meet in the gospels.

We can all agree, I hope, that the murder of Charlie Kirk was an inexcusable act. We should all feel sympathy and compassion for his family and loved ones. Had Kirk’s organization and his supporters been content to leave it there, I would as well. But I will not remain silent, and I hope others will not remain silent as the Republican party elevates to sainthood an apostle of racist, misogynist and homophobic hate. I will not remain silent, and I hope my church will not remain silent as the name of Jesus is dragged through the cesspool of Turning Point’s repulsive caricature of our faith. In this age of book banning, alternative facts, baseless conspiracy theories about everything from dog eating migrants to Tylenol, the truth matters more than ever.

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.

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[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.