The renowned Brazilian educator Paolo Freire often said that teaching others should be first and foremost an act of love. If that is true with regard to teaching, how much more should it be true with regard to preaching? The desire to stand before others and share a message about God and the gospel with them should be grounded in a profound love for them and be an expression of that love. That message should not only make those who hear it feel loved but also generate the same type of love in them.
In the ears of many, affirmations such as these might sound so obvious so as hardly to be worth making. Every preacher and church member already knows that a sermon should be grounded in love and talk about God’s love for us, as well as inspiring us to love God and others. Why bother even stating such a thing?
Why we preach
In my experience as a seminary professor and pastor, however, I have learned that at times the reality is very different. I have seen many students and preachers whose motivation seems to be something other than a deep love for those to whom they preach. While in most cases they undoubtedly feel love for their listeners, what they especially enjoy is being the center of attention and having an audience. They want to be admired, patted on the back, and congratulated for their sermons. They want to be told how inspiring, moving, and powerful their message was and how it kept people glued to their seat.
Church members often evaluate sermons on the basis of the same criteria. Was the message uplifting? Did it capture my attention and make me think? Was it entertaining and creative? Did it open my eyes to something new?
Personally, however, I do not recall ever having heard anyone qualify a sermon as profoundly loving, or hearing a listener say how much a sermon made them feel loved and want to reach out to others in love. Nor do I remember a pastor or preacher ever saying explicitly that whenever they deliver a message, that is their primary objective and constitutes the criterion on the basis of which they evaluate their message: “Did my words today make everyone who heard them feel deeply loved? Did those words instill in them a burning desire to fill the lives of others with that same love?”
Of course, that can happen only if we understand the objective of the God whom we believe in and proclaim in the same way. If that God instead has a different agenda, then so will we, and so will our message.
Where the preaching of love begins
In reality, the preaching that really matters is that which we do, not on Sunday mornings, but in our day-to-day relationships with others. That is where our sermon preparation must begin. Only when others see in us the unbending commitment to their wholeness and well-being in all that we do will the words we speak truly bear weight and fill lives and hearts with the love that God wishes to see in all of us for our own sake. Otherwise, no matter how much our words sparkle and glitter and generate “oohs” and “ahs,” they will be empty and accomplish nothing, like fireworks that disappear into the night sky.
True love begins with listening to others and immersing oneself in their reality. In the Ecclesial Base Communities of Latin America, Bible study always begins not with a Bible reading but a time in which all share what is going on in their lives and communities and analyze the realities they are experiencing. Only when this has taken place do they open the Bible to the passage chosen for the day and ask what it means. If a sermon is to accomplish the objective of making the hearers feel loved, that is where the analysis of the biblical text must begin. We listen to people before we listen to the text and only then ask what the text has to say.
Love that demands as it embraces
To make the listeners feel loved should not be understood in terms of merely speaking pleasant and gentle words to them or making them feel warm, cozy, and comfortable. Real love does not simply embrace but demands. Properly understood, “Repent!” is pure grace and love: “For your own sake, I implore you, stop doing the things that destroy your life and that of others and instead start loving yourself in the same way God loves you!” Jesus’ command, “Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me” is also pure grace and love. Paradoxically, only as you deny yourself and take up your cross to follow Jesus in seeking the wholeness of others together with your own are you truly loving yourself and allowing yourself to be loved.
For that reason, you cannot open your listeners up to feeling loved if you do not love them by seeking to generate in them the same love by means of the gospel you proclaim. Love for others must take the form of demanding that they too love for their own well-being and happiness; you cannot bring people to love by means of commands, rewards, or threats. Only love can generate love. Strictly speaking, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” is not an imperative or command but the outcome of experiencing the love of God and others. We love not because we have to but because we want to.
As you both embrace and demand, this is the message that must come across to your hearers: “I am standing here and telling you these things only because I love you deeply, only because you are so precious to me, to God, and to your sisters and brothers around you.”
If that is not what your listeners are hearing, then the message you are proclaiming will transform no one. Because the only thing that will truly change their lives is being loved. Unless you are prepared to tell them that you love them, not only with your words but with your everyday actions, you are not prepared to proclaim to them the gospel of Jesus Christ.