FPC Dallas

The journey through gravity and grace comes to its final movement here. After gravity, affliction, attention, de-creation, and obedience, we arrive at what has been present all along: grace.

Grace is not something we achieve at the end of the journey. It is what meets us in every stage, even when we are unfinished, uncertain, or resistant. It is not a reward for getting it right, but a reality that precedes us.

This sermon reflects on what it means to receive grace rather than strive for it. To recognize that even under the pull of gravity, even in our unmaking, we were never outside its reach.

Grace does not wait for completion. It meets us exactly where we are.

After de-creation, something new must take shape. This sermon turns to obedience not as rule-following, but as a lived response to grace.

In the Gravity and Grace series, obedience emerges after the self has been loosened from control and illusion. It is not forced compliance, but a form of listening that becomes action. A way of living that reflects trust rather than certainty.

Obedience asks us to move without fully knowing, to respond without securing the outcome, and to follow where grace leads rather than where control feels safest.

This is not about perfection. It is about posture. Learning to live in response to something greater than ourselves.

After naming gravity, affliction, and attention, this sermon explores what happens when the self begins to loosen its grip on the world it has constructed. Drawing on Simone Weil’s theology, de-creation is not destruction for its own sake, it is the undoing of illusion, control, and self-centered narratives that keep us from reality.

We spend much of our lives building a world that makes sense to us, one where we are at the center and everything confirms what we already believe. But grace does not reinforce that world. It dismantles it.

De-creation is the slow, often painful process of releasing our need to control, explain, and secure ourselves. It is what makes room for truth, for others, and ultimately for God.

Before we can be remade, something in us must be unmade.

After descending through gravity and affliction, the journey toward grace begins with attention. Drawing on Simone Weil’s insight that attention is the rarest form of generosity, this sermon explores how easily we replace true listening with explanation, advice, or quick solutions. In Mark’s Gospel, when the crowd tries to silence Bartimaeus, Jesus does something different—he stands still and asks a question. Attention leaves the space open long enough for another person to speak.

Not all suffering is the same. In this sermon from Mark 5, we explore the difference between pain and affliction. Pain scars the surface. Affliction burns underground, severing the roots that connect us to community, voice, and belonging.

As part of the Gravity & Grace series, this message reflects on the woman who hemorrhaged for twelve years and the synagogue leader, Jairus. One comes from the front with a voice intact. The other reaches from behind, nearly erased by isolation.

Affliction is not merely physical suffering, it is what happens when the soul begins to believe it is alone, invisible, or even complicit in its own pain.

In the midst of urgency and interruption, Jesus stops. He creates space for the invisible to become visible again. And he completes the miracle not only by healing her body, but by restoring her name: “Daughter.”

The affliction is suffered alone. The un-affliction always happens in public.

In Scripture, the sea is never neutral. It represents chaos, fear, and the forces that pull everything downward. In Mark 5, Jesus crosses the water to meet a man living among the tombs, bound by affliction and abandoned to gravity.

This opening sermon in the Gravity & Grace series explores what Simone Weil called the “natural movement of the soul”: fear descends, water always falls, and we often prefer familiar suffering to unfamiliar grace. Gravity is not malicious, it is simply the law.

But grace interrupts.

When Jesus restores the man to himself, he does not invite him into the boat. He sends him home to tell what mercy has done. The miracle is not only that he was healed, it is that he returned.

Grace does not always pull us toward safety. Sometimes it sends us back into the places least likely to understand us, armed only with a story of mercy.

Ash Wednesday begins with a descent. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is named “Beloved” at his baptism and immediately driven into the wilderness. This sermon explores what that movement means, not as punishment or “tough love,” but as a return to dust, to humanity, and to grace.

In a culture that avoids limitation and fears weakness, this message invites us to see the wilderness differently: not as breaking, but as reuniting. Not as exile, but as homecoming. In the wilderness of dust, God does sacred, recreating work.

As we begin Lent, we are reminded that grace is not found in our rising, but in our descent.

What if friendship is less about being understood and more about the willingness to truly know another person? This sermon reflects on Christian friendship as a practice of attention, one that honors full humanity rather than convenience or similarity.

Drawing from Philippians 2:19–22, the message explores Paul’s description of Timothy as a model of friendship shaped by humility, curiosity, and shared concern. In a culture that rewards self-expression and recognition, this sermon invites listeners to consider a different path: friendship rooted in seeking to know rather than striving to be known. Part of the Koinonia: The Five Marks of Friendship series.

What if friendship is less about being understood and more about the willingness to truly know another person? This sermon reflects on Christian friendship as a practice of attention—one that honors full humanity rather than convenience or similarity.

Drawing from Philippians 2:19–22, the message explores Paul’s description of Timothy as a model of friendship shaped by humility, curiosity, and shared concern. In a culture that rewards self-expression and recognition, this sermon invites listeners to consider a different path: friendship rooted in seeking to know rather than striving to be known. Part of the Koinonia: The Five Marks of Friendship series, preached by Charlene Jin Lee

What makes a voice trustworthy—and why can confidence alone be misleading? This sermon explores “righteous speech” as more than tone or delivery, arguing that truthful words are formed through the disciplined work of discernment.

Drawing from Paul’s prayer in Philippians, this message connects the physiology of speech with the spiritual practice of separating what is true from what is merely acceptable. Righteous speech, the sermon suggests, comes from a life that has already done the interior work of clarity, courage, and conviction. Part of the Koinonia: The Five Marks of Friendship series, preached by Amos Disasa