FPC Dallas

When God commands the construction of the ark of the covenant, the chosen material is not cedar from a distant forest or some rare and noble wood. It is acacia, a rough desert tree growing in the wilderness. In this sermon from Eshel: Preaching the Trees, we consider what it means that God builds holy things from ordinary materials. Again and again, Scripture reveals a God who works with what is already present, shaping the available rather than waiting for the ideal. The acacia tree reminds us that faith is always contextual. God meets people where they are, in the landscapes they actually inhabit, and forms something sacred from the resources already at hand. This message reflects on vocation, place, and the surprising ways God transforms the ordinary into a dwelling place for the holy. Part of the Eshel: Preaching the Trees series. Sermon by Rev. Amos Disasa. Subscribe for weekly sermons from First Presbyterian Church of Dallas. fpcdallas.org

Good Friday confronts us with a different kind of violence. Not only the machinery of empire, but the quieter, more familiar force of anonymity. In Mark’s Gospel, the cross is surrounded by a crowd described only as “they.” No names. No responsibility. Just a chorus of passing voices. This sermon explores what happens when suffering becomes spectacle. When humiliation is carried out not by a single villain, but by a diffuse, indifferent crowd. The ones passing by have somewhere else to be. Their mockery costs them nothing. And yet, it is exactly this casual distance that allows the cross to happen. Against this backdrop, one figure is named. Simon of Cyrene. A passerby who is pulled into the story, forced to carry what he did not choose. In a moment shaped by anonymity, he becomes visible. Good Friday does not ask whether you would have volunteered for the cross. It asks something smaller, and harder. When you find yourself near someone else’s suffering, will you disappear into the crowd, or will you remain? You are not a they. You are known.

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 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.

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.

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 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

Jessie Light-Wells preaches on Epiphany Sunday