Take a Knee Today
Image Credit: Google Gemini 2025
By Rev. Matt Horan
Coaching soccer has been one of my life's favorite things. I often miss it.
One of the unwritten rules of youth soccer is that, when a player on the other team gets hurt and the game is stopped for people to come out and help them, our team "takes a knee," kneeling down wherever they are on the field. Once the player is back on their feet or being helped off the field, our team stands back up, and our players and parents on the sideline clap for them.
Soccer is a contact sport, and sometimes the play is physical. Sometimes there are shoulders and elbows and slide tackles in the desperation of trying to get the upper hand, and sometimes those may evolve to harsh words or even frustrated shoves. Yet even if that opponent has been elbowing our team the whole game, the rule is the same. If they get hurt, we take a knee.
I'm not naïve enough to think that the practice of our politics and youth soccer have a lot of overlap these days. I know that, in the course of our political interactions, elbows are thrown every day that land really painfully.
Today there will be a funeral for Charlie Kirk at a football stadium in Arizona. There are plenty of speakers scheduled to speak at the service who have thrown painful elbows in the past, and they will be eulogizing a man who also threw painful elbows of his own. I hope not, but I know there's a pretty reasonable chance that elbows will be thrown by one or more of these speakers during the service today. They could end up providing plenty of opportunities for angry posts, comments, blog articles, videos, etc. from people who disagree with the politics of Charlie Kirk or one or more of today’s speakers, and it is your right to create them should you so choose.
Last Sunday I reminded my congregation of the lyrics to "Let there Be Peace on Earth." They say "Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.," and so I have a suggestion for today. I suggest, regardless of what is said at Charlie Kirk’s funeral, we all take a knee, letting it pass without comment. Our social media interactions don’t change people’s mind anyway, so taking one day—or even just one event—off probably won’t cost your side much, regardless of which one it is.
In fact, maybe that player being helped off the field--the one that elbowed you in the nose earlier in the game--will see their opponents taking a knee. Maybe we'll have a moment of seeing each other as something other than an opponent, but as people who are capable of caring about one another.
It would probably be just that--a moment. However, perhaps we'll discover that it was a good moment. Who knows? We might even discover that we liked it, and that it just might be worth trying again sometime.
Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me… and when it comes to commenting on today’s funeral, let’s all just take a knee.
--MH
