Third in the Series, Seven Stories: Jesus’ Big Story, and the Other Stories by Which We Livebr /

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Could we start this morning with a prayer?  A moment to pause and orient your heart to God.  A moment to check-in and ask yourself, “how is my heart this morning?”  Let’s take a few minutes to check our hearts and check-in with God. If it helps you, you can put your hand over your heart.   “How is your heart this morning?”br /

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Silence.br /

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Dear Jesus, maybe our hearts are all over the place this morning -  heavy, curious, weary, broken, or numb, impatient, eager - maybe all we can say is, “well it’s beating!”  I want to give thanks to you for all of that, Jesus. Thank you Jesus that when we ask for your presence you point us back to our hearts.  Could you, this morning -  let our hearts hear your voice - and feel your presence?br /

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Amen. br /

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Stories and our Heartsbr /

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In the gospel of Luke, Jesus in his longest sermon says that “people speak from the fullness of their hearts” (Luke 6:45). Now, what fills our hearts, Jesus says  - is wide open with possibilities - the full spectrum from goodness to evil.br /

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From the beginning of our existence I believe Jesus has been speaking good into our hearts.  He’s been filling our hearts with HIS great story of peace and mutuality and connection that holds wilder power than we could ever imagine.   A story that has the potential to shape our lives, to build new things and hold our humanity to a greater purpose - to dream and to vision - for greater justice and peace than we say today.br /

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I think he keeps speaking His story to us - for this very purpose - to stretch our imagination.. And the capacity of our  hearts… .  To keep imagining just how generous Jesus’ story of love is - because it’s a hard one to believe on a daily basis - when the stories we are fed are ones full of antagonists like harm and anxiety - fear and oppression - frenzy and death…these characters SUFFOCATE and flatten the story of love into hard, dark stories.   They are such hard stories, BUT they catch our attention, because they are so LOUD and prevalent - and forcefully vying for space in our hearts. br /

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These stories prove to be effective weapons at piercing our full hearts and deflating them to dead end stories like of domination, redemptive violence, isolation, purification, victimization and accumulation.br /

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These are the six primary stories, that authors Brian McLaren and Gareth Higgins suggest we tell and have been telling, writing and listening to, for a really long time. br /

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These are the stories that we are visiting in this current sermon series.  Pastor Steve talked about domination and redemptive violence the last two weeks and today I’ll talk about our tendency to isolate - and what effects ripple out from a seemingly benign posture.br /

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These stories are important for us to inspect.  To find out just how much space they have taken up in our hearts - to do the work of excavating where they are rooted, and unweave them from the language and vocabulary we speak in our lives and that we speak of God. br /

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This is important so that the spiritual fibers of the Holy Spirit that were written in our DNA from birth, can rise back to the forefront and can be familiar words in God’s story, that speak to bind us to one another  -  ones that say “we are not alone”, “that we are loved” and “blessed by God”.  Today we’ll look at just how sly - but powerful isolation can be at separating us not only from each other - but from this deep, true story of God in us - that was planted long ago. br /

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We are the ones that get to fill out the story of Jesus - we are the ones that give it shape - dimension - the height, the depth, the width -  how beautiful and powerful this story can be if we speak from hearts that are filled with the greatest,