Is there a place for emotion in sermons?

Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025
by Rev. Dr. Mike Hegeman

“I know it’s a good sermon if it makes me cry.” This was often my reply to those who used to ask me, as a person with a PhD in preaching, “What makes for a good sermon?” Now, I know the dangers of this assessment, because any one of us is susceptible to emotional manipulation, especially when it comes to preaching. The renowned preachers of the First and Second Great Awakenings in this country (in the 1730s and 1840s respectively) knew how to sway a crowd with showy and even fiery preaching. Jonathan Edwards preached his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” in July of 1741, in which he vividly painted the torments that awaited those who fell short of God’s righteousness.

“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire ... you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes, as the most hateful and venomous serpent is in ours.”

Believe it or not, this type of preaching moved people dramatically 280 years ago! They wept and swooned under such emotional rhetoric. And this wasn’t anything new. St. Augustine of Hippo, back in the early 4th century, wrote a whole handbook on preaching. He says that the preacher is to use all means available to “persuade” the listener: 

“It is the duty, therefore, of the eloquent preacher, when trying to persuade the people about something that has to be done, not only to teach, in order to instruct them; not only to delight, in order to hold them; but also to sway, in order to conquer and win them.”

It’s the “delight” part of what Augustine advocated that could be most suspect. He recommended using language that captivated and inspired the imagination; he didn’t say, “Sing your sermons.” 

And now we’ve come to the main point. Last Sunday, I used the lyrics of a song to “bring home” the overarching sense that responding to God’s call in Jesus is a life-sustaining action. It is a less calculated decision and at times an emotional “knowing.” We follow Jesus because we have “heard a call,” “seen a light,” and “felt a touch.” The song I quoted, “I Hear a Call” (written by Tony Arata and performed by Emmy Lou Harris), uses vivid and heart-wrenchingly poetic language. The words themselves stir and move. But when these words are sung, something else happens. Words spoken and words sung occupy different places in the brain. They affect us differently. I know this both as a lifelong singer, performer, and music educator. Words sung impact us differently from words spoken or words preached. There is a great power in this knowing. I hope that I would use this “rhetorical” means of communicating the gospel with great respect for the task of preaching and for the gathered hearers. To sing during a sermon cannot serve to draw attention to the preacher, nor can it serve merely to “delight,” as Augustine would term it. It must serve the purpose of the gospel itself. 

If the sermon (like last Sunday’s) was about “the call” God makes on each of us through Jesus Christ, then every word of the sermon, spoken or sung, must serve this gospel purpose. Augustine says, 

“The aim of our preacher, then, when speaking of things that are just and holy and good--and who should not speak of anything else--the aim, as I say, is that one pursues to the best of his or her ability to be listened to with understanding, with pleasure, and with obedience. The preacher should be in no doubt that any speaking ability he or she has derives more from devotion to prayer than dedication to oratory; and so, by praying for oneself and for those that are about to be addressed, the preacher must become a person of prayer before becoming a person of words.”

I can say that my goal in using poetic language to captivate and move those who are listening to the sermon and on occasion to use sung words is not only to teach or to delight, as Augustine would put it, but also to employ such words and music to create the event, as much as is possible from my side, of God’s encountering each of us with the living Word, Jesus Christ. My prayer before, during, and after a sermon is that God uses any moment of worship for us all to be encountered by the EVENT of God’s reconciling and transforming love. 

Do I like to be moved during a sermon, even to have tears come to my eyes? Yes, I do. I still consider it a good sermon that moves my heart and my mind with wonder and awe. Also, I want to know that there is a greater depth beyond any spectacle in preaching that moves my soul to answer God’s call that says, “Love me and your neighbor.”