This sermon was preached at Wesley United Methodist Church on Sunday, June 25, 2023. In the video below, the sermon begins at 34:35.

1 Corinthians 2:1-5

People today are obsessed with feelings, and our culture and media really bank on our emotions. They say, “Sex sells,” but so do fear and anger. Often times, what we see on the news day in and day out is meant to arouse our feelings, those deep emotions of being afraid of something or someone or being angry at something or someone. And that keeps us coming back for more. They get paid. We get mad. I get frustrated when I read a provocative headline, click on the article and read it, and find out that it was just clickbait. The story wasn’t as juicy as they made it sound. Anybody else experience this before? They get our emotions all worked up. They’re good at it. The media knows what they’re doing. They are masters of rhetoric and persuasion. One of my favorite quotes says, “Whoever does not study rhetoric will become a victim of it.”

Well, my friends, since we are preachers, proclaiming the good news about Jesus, persuading men as Paul puts it, then we too must become students and masters of rhetoric and persuasion. Not only so that we don’t become victims of it, but so that we can use it in the right way, not to scare and enrage people, but to persuade and inspire people to follow Christ. We are trying to bring others into God’s kingdom with us. We want them to believe like we do and put their trust and faith in God through Christ.

And so, since we are preachers and persuaders, we are students of rhetoric, learning how to preach effectively to people and how to convince people of our own faith and trust in Christ. It’s not a command. We aren’t commanding people to follow Christ. We are tasked with persuading and convincing people that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. It’s convincing, not coercing. It’s persuading, not pulverizing.

The Pathos of Preaching

So, for the last few Sundays, we have been talking about rhetoric and persuasion while trying to answer the question, “How should we preach the Gospel?” And preaching and persuasion have three main elements, two of which we have already covered. Preaching the Gospel requires ethos—gaining people’s trust—and preaching requires logos—clearly and logically communicating the message of the Gospel. So, today we are exploring the third element that every Gospel preacher needs, and that is pathos. Pathos means emotions, feelings, passions, desires, or motives. Believe it or not, pathos is the most convincing and most persuasive element of preaching. Preaching with pathos touches people on the inside. It gets down to the heart of the matter.

And getting at the heart is the most convincing way to persuade someone. We humans are emotional creatures. People largely make their decisions based upon how they feel (pathos), more than how they think (logos) or whether it is right or wrong (ethos).

Take food, for example. Should I eat a Big Mac meal from McDonald’s? Well, if we use logic, we know that it is not very healthy, so therefore we reason that we shouldn’t eat it. Eating bad, harmful things doesn’t make sense. Why would we eat something that would harm our bodies? Therefore, the logical thing to do is not eat it.

Now if we use ethics, we know that it is wrong to eat unhealthy foods that will damage our bodies. The right thing to do is not to eat it. But people still buy and eat Big Macs and pizza and ice cream and they drink soda and the list goes on…and now I’ve made you hungry.

But why do we do these things? Why do we eat Big Macs? Because it feels good! It feels good to our senses: “For a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, the medicine go down, the medicine go down.” It’s feelings, sensations, and emotions that convince us to eat fast food—although it’s sometimes just nice and convenient if we’re in a hurry. But it tastes good. It feels good. Who doesn’t like ice cream and chocolate and cake and peach cobbler or you name the dessert? Right?! Nobody wants broccoli or brussels sprouts over cake. It’s no contest.

We make our decisions based more upon feelings than we do upon logic (right thinking) or ethics (right doing). And so, since we are Christian preachers who persuade people like Paul did, like Jesus did, like the apostles did, then our preaching needs pathos. It’s preaching that touches the heart, not just the mind and not just the conscience. Above all, God wants our hearts. Our hearts, how we feel in the inside, will dictate how we live and how we give and how we do and how we serve: “out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks” (Matt 12:34). God said to Samuel, “People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart” (1 Sam 16:7). And the greatest commandment: “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart” (Deut 6:5). God wants our hearts, and our preaching must reach for people’s hearts, and we trust God that he “can change the lepers spots and melt a heart of stone,” as that old hymn says. God wants to transform people’s hearts and lives from the inside out. And so, we need to preach with pathos, which touches people’s hearts.

Pathetic Preaching

But there’s a lot of preaching out there today that is just downright pathetic. It doesn’t have any heart in it. This kind of preaching focuses just upon the mind and what makes logical sense. And it’s good and right to make sure that our preaching makes sense and has lots of logos, but if that’s all it has, then it’s going to miss the point. I spent over a decade in academia and heard lots of Christian papers and scholarly presentations and even sermons that completely lacked any heart behind it. All logos. No pathos. Again, it’s good to answer people’s questions and doubts that they have about God and the Bible. We need that. Absolutely. But that’s not all we need. So, I call that pathetic preaching, because it’s a pathetic excuse for preaching devoid of pathos, devoid of the heart, and that’s not what we’re aiming for.

Pathological Preaching

And then there’s what I call pathological preaching. It’s crazy…crazy off the mark. It’s pathological. This is preaching that focuses exclusively upon the conscience, and not in a good way. This is fear-based preaching and guilt-based preaching. It’s where preachers scare people into becoming Christians. It’s the “scare the Hell out of you” technique: “Turn to Jesus or you will burn for eternity.” But, friends, fear is not a good reason to follow Christ. Fear of Hell is no reason to become a Christian. We don’t want people to follow Jesus because they are scared of him and scared of punishment.

And guilt is not a good reason to become a Christian either. Making people feel so bad about their sin that they turn to Jesus is not a good way to make Christian disciples. That’s pathological. That’s crazy preaching. It doesn’t work and it doesn’t make good Christians or good disciples and it doesn’t sound like good news to me.

The Heart of the Matter

I had a friend in high school that reached out to me after I became a Christian, because he saw how Jesus had changed and transformed my life so drastically. He came to me afraid and guilt-ridden. He was struggling with some sin in his life and he said, “Tim, I’m struggling with this, but I like it. I like to sin. I like sinning. It feels good. But I don’t want to go to Hell. I don’t want to give up my sin. But I don’t want to burn in Hell. I know that I need to stop but I don’t want to.” He was afraid. He was guilty.

And I told him that being a Christian and living the Christian life wasn’t about those things. It’s not about being afraid of Jesus or avoiding going to Hell. That is not the motivation that anyone should have for becoming a Christian. That kind of faith won’t last. I’m not even sure that we can call that faith.

Instead, I said that becoming a Christian is about love. It’s about being loved by God, receiving love from God, and then and only then giving love back to God in return in gratefulness and thanksgiving. It’s about knowing God and being known by God. It’s a relationship, not some religiosity, not some earning our way to heaven because we resisted sin so well. No, the Christian faith is about love and growing in relationship with the Lord. That’s the motivation, the pathos, for becoming a Christian and living the Christian life.

“Christ’s love compels us,” says Paul in 2 Cor 4:14.

1 John 4:18-19 says, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us.”

Sadly, for my friend, I don’t think that computed at the time, and I don’t know where he is at in his faith today. But I tried to show him that the reason that I stopped sinning in certain ways wasn’t because I tried really hard to stop because I knew it was wrong and I didn’t want to get in trouble with God and be punished for all eternity. In fact, it wasn’t me who stopped sinning in those ways at all. It was the transforming power of Jesus Christ, his Holy Spirit living in me, changing my heart, shaping me more into the image of Christ that made my heart not want those passions, those desires anymore.

God can change the heart. God can change our desires. Jesus can transform people’s lives, and he does it from the inside out, not from the outside in.

The Pathos of Christ

And so, in 1 Corinthians 2, Paul recounts how he came to the Corinthians when he first preached to them. He didn’t come preaching with the greatest rhetorical pomp and circumstance, “not with eloquence and superiority of speech,” but he came preaching with a humble and contrite heart meditating upon Christ’s love on the cross, the passion of the Christ, the pathos of Christ. And what happened then was that God’s Spirit was poured out upon them, and they experienced the power of God for themselves.

“My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power” (1 Cor 2:4-5).

And that’s what is convincing, my friends. When people experience the love and power of God, they are changed. That’s what changed the Corinthians. That’s what changed me. I experienced Christ’s love. I called out to him, and he answered. When I was in trouble, he came to my rescue. When I was hurting as a troubled teenager, his love swept in and changed my life forever and I have forever been changed, and from then on I have never been the same.

The Pathology of Christianity

And there were three parts to my coming to Christ: I had Christian friends who loved me whom I trusted (ethos); I had Christian friends who answered my questions and doubts and clearly spoke the truth of the Gospel in love to me (logos); and I then had a powerful encounter with the Lord himself, where he showed up for me and I experienced his love and grace and he transformed my life from the inside out (pathos).

My faith wasn’t based upon fear. It wasn’t based upon guilt or a sense of obligation. It wasn’t based purely upon logic either, though that helped. But my coming to Christ was based upon love; an encounter with the love of Jesus, the love of our heavenly Father. That’s what changed my heart of stone.

Love, my friends, is the motive, the motivation, the desire, the emotion or feeling if you will, that we are after as we go and make disciples of all nations. We want people to be loved into the kingdom of God through us and our actions, but ultimately we want people to encounter God himself. We want people to know and experience Jesus for themselves.

Preaching with Pathos

So, what does this mean for us as preachers? How do we preach with pathos? How do we become conduits of God’s love through which people experience and encounter Jesus?

Well, first, we tell our stories of how God changed our lives, how he showed up, how he helped us in our time of need, how he saved us from ourselves and our sin and changed our lives. It’s as Psalm 34 says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8). We’ve tasted and we’ve seen God work in our lives. And we encourage people to taste and see for themselves God’s goodness too. So, the first way we preach with pathos is by sharing our own stories and testimonies of how God touched us. We make it personal: “You ask me how I know he lives. He lives within my heart.”

But second, it’s more than sharing testimonies, because it’s not just what you say, but how you say it. Preaching with pathos has to do with how you preach the Gospel. And that’s our question: how should we preach the Gospel? Well, give it some enthusiasm. Don’t be like Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh: “God…changed…my…life…can’t you see how happy I am?” Don’t be Eeyore. Say it like you mean it. Preach with conviction. Tell your story with a pep in your step. That’s engaging. That’s touches hearts and connects with people. And at the same time, it needs to be genuine and real. We have to mean it and feel it. It has to be authentic and mean something personally to us.

Of course, it’s not emotionalism or sensationalism that we are after. It’s about people encountering the Living God. It’s about inspiring others to love God and desire God. That’s the motivation: loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength as we point people to Jesus. And we can trust that if they really want him, they will find him, because Jesus is always there, ready and waiting for people to turn to him. If they want him, they can have him. If you want Christ today, you can have him. He’s there. He’s always ready and waiting for us to say yes to him.

How Should We Preach the Gospel?

So, how should we preach the Gospel? With ethos, logos, and pathos. We should preach with our lives and walk the walk. That’s ethos. We should preach with our mouths Christ crucified and raised from the dead and talk the talk. That’s logos. And we should preach from our hearts, with conviction and genuineness, testifying to what God has done in our lives and praying for our hearers to experience God himself and what he wants to do in their lives as well. That is pathos. This is how we should preach the Gospel. It is so important that we preach with all three of these things: ethos, logos, and pathos.

But in the end, we trust God for him to do his work in people’s lives. We can’t force people to believe or become disciples of Jesus. It’s up to God and his Holy Spirit to move in people’s hearts, and it’s up to people to choose the Lord for themselves, not because of fear or guilt or obligation, but because of love. And it’s up to us to be faithful and preach the Gospel.

John Wesley once said, “I look upon all the world as my parish; thus far I mean, that, in whatever part of it I am, [it is my] duty to declare unto all that are willing to hear, the glad tidings of salvation.” “All the world [is] my parish.” All the world is your parish. So go out today and tomorrow and this week and next week and next month and next year and preach wherever you go, because all of the world is our parish. All of the world is our congregation. All of the world is waiting to hear about Jesus, the Lord of all, who conquered sin, death, and the devil, who brought about the salvation of the world, who is and who was and who is to come, who is seated at God’s right hand, and who will come again in glory, bringing heaven to earth, justice for the oppressed, good news to the poor, healing for the brokenhearted, freedom for the captives, release from darkness for the prisoners, comfort for all who mourn, bestowing a crown of beauty for ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair (Isa 61:1-3). Friends, this is the good news. Go share it with the world! Let’s pray.

Prayer

Lord, we pray this morning that wonderful prayer that St. Francis prayed. We began with St. Francis telling us to preach the Gospel at all times and if necessary use words, and so it is fitting that we close this sermon series by praying the Peace Prayer of St. Francis.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace: where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

Benediction and Charge

2 Timothy 4:1-8