America experienced yet another horrific day of gun violence yesterday, September 10, 2025. At a public event on the campus of Utah Valley University, an assassin’s bullet killed Charlie Kirk, the nation’s most visible and persuasive voice for the far-right conservative movement and a husband and father of two beautiful children. Two people of interest were detained but have now been released. I read this morning that the weapon, a rife, has been found in a nearby patch of woods but now the search for the killer continues. Ahead are exhausting days of investigation, reflection and introspection on motive and meaning. David French, one of my favorite columnists for the New York Times, has already posted an initial response that lays out the challenge of these moments of violence and profound grief. He wrote the following in “If We Keep This Up, Charlie Kirk Will Not Be The Last One,” September 11, 2025:
When I speak on college campuses, I’m often asked what single thing worries me most about American politics and culture. I have an easy answer — it’s hatred. Even vast political differences can be managed when people acknowledge the humanity and dignity of their opponents. At the same time, however, small conflicts can spiral into big ones when hatred and vengeance take away our eyes and ears.
Every threat, every assault, every shooting, every murder — and certainly every political assassination — builds the momentum of hate and fear.
Is that what we have in American politics and culture today? Is there a momentum of hate and fear building, threatening to consume us with its growing impulse for violence?
Matthew Dowd, the MSNBC political analyst, was justifiably fired for the inappropriate and unacceptable comments he made about Charlie Kirk, comments for which he apologized. I read those comments and they were objectionable. However, if applied to this ‘momentum of hate and fear in American politics and culture,’ they seem worth noting in their truth-telling starkness and they apply to us all.
And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.
And I think that’s the environment we’re in. (Callum Sutherland, Time, 9/11/25)
I share French’s greatest worry and Dodd’s lament, the corrosive power of hate, but I am reminded of a quote that is carved into the South Wall of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial:
Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that." Strength to Love, 1963.
David Brooks, in a recent and now prescient article from the New Tork Times on September 5, 2025, titled Why I Am Not A Liberal, offered these thoughts:
Today most of our problems are moral, relational and spiritual more than they are economic. There is the crisis of disconnection, the collapse of social trust, the loss of faith in institutions, the destruction of moral norms in the White House, the rise of amoral gangsterism around the world.
Brooks is correct in his assessment. We are dealing with a crisis of disconnection, a collapse of social trust and the destruction of moral norms in both high and low places. We worship power and sacrifice the truth and our integrity on its altar. Our sense of community, sustained by a respect for our common humanity and the dignity of others, whether they be citizen, immigrant or refugee, has been dreadfully compromised, if not shredded altogether. Amid the noise and chaos of hateful thoughts giving way to hateful words and then hateful actions, Christian voices must not go mute.
I read a post this morning from the Relevant Podcast that was clearly providing a Christian voice to the chorus of commentary and analysis. Reverend Chris Durso, pastor of Good Company Church in Manhattan, New York City, wrote the following:
If your truth leads to murder, your truth doesn’t know love. Today we grieve with Charlotte, where a young Ukrainian refugee life was taken in a senseless stabbing. We grieve with Utah, where Charlie Kirk was assassinated in an act of political hate. We grieve with Colorado, where students watched their school turn into a place of bloodshed. These tragedies remind us that violence disguised as conviction is not truth, but deception. Real love protects, heals and restores. And if we truly believe in love, then we must rise above fear, resist hate and fight for one another’s lives with compassion, courage and conviction.
I can think of no passage from scripture more relevant to the moment than the one from the Gospel according to John, the fifteenth chapter:
If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become[c] my disciples. 9 As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.
12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants[d] any longer, because the servant[e] does not know what the master is doing, but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. (NRSVU)
We are invited to abide in Jesus’ love to cast out those hateful thoughts, and at the same time, to hear his commandment anew to love others in the same way that Jesus loves us- unconditionally, sacrificially and as a sign of the sweet fruit we bear on his behalf. Moreover, hateful words and hateful actions must be cast away. Jesus says that rather than calling us servants, he calls us friends, but I would prefer that we again be more faithful servant than friend, serving the will and fulfilling the prayer of Christ, namely “That We All Be One.” (John 17:21-23)
So we are being summoned and we begin, perhaps, with humility—a willingness to listen, to repent, and to relearn what it means to belong to one another. The work of healing is neither swift nor simple; it unfolds in the daily practice of kindness, in the fierce commitment to justice, and in the quiet labor of forgiveness. To abide in love, as Christ enjoins, is not mere sentimentality; it is a radical and costly endeavor, demanding that we relinquish our pride and our grievances, and seek the flourishing of all, especially those of opposing political views or dissenting cultural values.
Such transformation requires more than private virtue; it calls forth a public witness. In fractured and grief-stricken times, the courage to bridge divides and the vision to imagine a reconciled community are themselves acts of what Rev. William Barber III calls “holy defiance.” Each gesture of mercy, every stand for truth, every refusal to surrender to despair becomes a thread in the tapestry of renewal. With hearts rooted in Christ’s love, we are equipped not only to mourn the brokenness and tragic deaths around us but also to labor for restoration—bearing fruit that endures beyond our own brief season.
Let us, then, not grow weary in pursuing this call. I am confident that in each act of love, however small or hidden, we affirm the enduring hope that the peace of Christ can still be the heartbeat of our common life—a light undimmed by the shadows of our age, a promise sustained in the abiding presence of God among us.
Blessings to all on this solemn day of Remembrance, September 11, 2025.