I did not wish him pain, or sudden death.
I did not wish his children to suffer bereavement and trauma.
I did not wish for a world where disputes are settled by gunshot.

But now that he is dead, what am I to say?
In life, he was my enemy.

I say this not to describe my feelings for him. In calling him my enemy, I speak only of his actions toward me. I want you to note the direction of the action here, because it’s important and I want to be very clear about this. My enemy is someone who seeks to harm me, not vice versa. If you seek to harm me, you are my enemy. If I seek to harm you – well then, I’m yours.

He was my enemy, but I was not his enemy. He was not my target, but I was his target.

Not me, personally, mind you. I have had very few, if any, personal enemies in my life — for which I count myself very lucky, because it is at least as much due to luck as anything else.

Charlie Kirk was not my personal enemy, because he never met me. Nevertheless, he bore ill will toward me, and people like me, and people that I love. He stirred hatred against us. He tried to convince his followers that I was their enemy, which I was not; but, believing him, some of them became mine.

In the moments before he was shot, Charlie Kirk was engaged in a conversation, about whether transgender people are more likely to be mass shooters. (They are not.) But for Kirk, it was just the latest of his many statements vilifying LGBTQ people – a group which includes me and many of my loved ones, including my dad. He has called us an “abomination” and once said the execution of gay people was part of “God’s perfect plan.”

So what am I to say, now that he is dead?

I did not grow up watching the sort of action films in which avenging superheroes gets to violently destroy the villains in the final scene. Except I did grow up watching the Wizard of Oz, in which not one but two wicked witches are killed, the first by a tornado and the second by a bucket of water. The first death is an act of God, the second an accident. It’s not like the Munchkins took matters into their own hands to rid themselves of their enemy. But when their oppressor dies, the friends of Dorothy celebrate. The little people dance in the streets, singing “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead.” And there were some who took to social media last week, to proclaim essentially the same thing. As the more recent musical version of the same story says, “No one mourns the wicked.”

Except, of course, that someone always does. To quote another musical, “No one is alone.” One person’s enemy is another person’s beloved. Did the shooter know, when he pulled the trigger, that Charlie Kirk’s three-year-old daughter was there in the crowd? I love the Wizard of Oz, but the Wizard of Oz is a fable; in the real world, violence never harms just one person. Trauma and bereavement spread out like ripples from any sudden death.

Charlie Kirk’s alleged murderer is now in custody, delivered to the FBI by a member of his own family. He is 21 years old. He appears to have been radicalized through his online activities. He is therefore part of a pattern, of young men increasingly embracing violence as their personal manifesto. It was initially assumed he must be a far-left extremist; it now appears he may have been a far-far-right extremist. Does it matter? It is the same action, either way. People of all religious beliefs and political ideologies are drawn to the simplicity of a loaded weapon, and its illusion of power.

But the fact that the very same act might have been the result of diametrically opposed political goals should give us pause; and cause us to question, whether the ends justify the means. Or vice versa.

Three months before I was born, civil rights activist Medgar Evers was assassinated. By the time I turned five, John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr, and Robert Kennedy had all been shot and killed. It was a dangerous time for public figures in America. Now half a century later, we appear to be in such a dangerous time once again. Just two months before Charlie Kirk’s death, Minnesota state legislator Mellisa Horman was shot and killed in her home.

Does it matter, which side the dead were on? Does it matter, which side the shooter was on? Is the enemy of my enemy my friend? or another enemy?

To make sense of this, I turn as I ordinarily do, to Jesus.

Jesus said, LOVE YOUR ENEMIES.

Not, conquer your enemies. Not, kill your enemies. LOVE your enemies.

For three hundred and fifty years, the First Church of Deerfield has aspired to follow the teachings of Jesus. For some of that time the congregation identified as Trinitarian, and for some of that time the congregation identified as Unitarian, and now we are a sort of theological chimera, a hybrid; but still after all of these permutations our mission statement reads, “as his followers, we accept the religion of Jesus, holding in accordance with his teachings that practical religion is summed up in love to God and love to humanity.” Those of us here today differ in our beliefs about the divinity of Jesus, but we have historically been united by a desire to embody the love of Jesus. So I suggest we at least take his words seriously, and consider them.

Do we take him seriously, when he says, Love your enemies?

The apostles took that teaching seriously. When Jesus was arrested, one of his friends drew a sword to defend him, but when Jesus told him, “NO MORE OF THIS,” he put down his weapon for good. In the early years of the church, Christians had many enemies to fear; but no one had anything to fear from them. It wasn’t until the emperor merged church and state, that the defenders of the faith began using weapons.

What do we make of this teaching? Do we take Jesus seriously, when he says, Love your enemies? Or do we carve out some exceptions, to this rule?  The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr took him seriously; the German pastor carved out at least one exception, when he joined an assassination plot against Adolph Hitler.

Most of us are not likely to attempt a political assassination. (I’m tempted to say, if you are, don’t tell me – but maybe I should say, if you are, let’s talk.) But do we cheer secretly – or not so secretly – when someone else does it for us? Ding dong, the witch is dead?

What then, am I to say about Charlie Kirk, now that he is dead?

“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” So says Shakespeare’s Marc Antony, in the play Julius Caesar. In my experience the reverse is just as often true; people are loathe to speak ill of the dead. Marc Antony says those words and then goes on to preach a eulogy so unabashedly praising of Caesar that by the end of his speech, a crowd of mourners has turned into a mob of avengers. We’ve seen a little of that, too, in the last few days. And meanwhile, the family and friends of Charlie Kirk are trying to scrub the internet of any posts that point out his sins.

When I’m working with a family preparing a memorial, they will sometimes share with me difficult things, about the deceased. And they wonder whether perhaps these aspects of the deceased’s life should be avoided, in the eulogy. Should I mention that she was an alcoholic? Can I say that he was really hard on me, when I was a kid? Do we admit that the cause of death was overdose? Just how honest should a eulogy be?

I leave that up to the family, but I do tell them, that when we gather to mourn, we need to mourn the whole person.  If we remember only some sanitized or simplified or glorified version, then we aren’t really remembering the real person at all. It’s some other person we are describing, if we turn our very human neighbors and friends into saints.

Jesus knew who his enemies were. He was under no illusions about their intentions toward him. He loved them anyway. He did not tell his followers, praise your enemies; he said, love them.

So when we speak of the dead — whoever they are — let us speak with both love and honesty. Let our eulogies be honest eulogies, admitting of good and evil. Only in this way, can our love be an honest love.

For this is as good a working definition of grace as any I have heard:  Grace is the experience of being fully known — and yet beloved.

Grace be unto you.

Amen.

Rev. Liza B. Knapp
The First Church of Deerfield
September 14, 2025

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