I have mentioned over the past several weeks that soon we will be reviewing our vision and mission, and making sure that we are still heeding God’s call. Mission and vision work can often feel tedious and downright hard, but at the same time, it is really helpful for everyone here to know and to pray and to be clear about who God is calling us to be, and what God is calling us to do.
When I was working in business, I had the opportunity to manage a number of groups. Fairly often, the groups were pretty dysfunctional, for a variety of reasons. Most often, the groups became dysfunctional because they did not share a mission and they lost sight of the vision.
This is kind of the situation that the apostle Paul finds himself in. He is writing to the church at Ephesus. A church he had started a few years before. Ephesus was a huge port city, very cosmopolitan, very diverse. Paul started this church with the vision that the members would share the gospel of Christ. Somewhere along the way, the members lost their vision. They started to get hung up on who was in their group, and who was not in. Because of their Jewish heritage, they felt they had been called by God and they were the in-group. They also felt that the gentiles were not called by God, could not be faithful members of the church, and that the gentiles did not fit in. This is the hostility that Paul had to deal with.
We have seen this type of hostility played out in other situations; between blacks and whites in the US, between those who are straight and those having a different sexual orientation, between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland and the UK, between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East. We are not unfamiliar with the type of hostility that Paul spoke of. We are not unfamiliar with what can result if there is no clear and shared vision.
Some of you might be familiar with an assessment tool called a Jo-Hari Window. It was developed several decades ago by two guys Joe and Harry. The tool is used to build self-awareness, to promote understanding, and to improve relationships. It is a stepping block towards a shared vision. The tool is all about helping us to get to know one another better through our behaviors. It is only when we get to know one another better that we can break down the dividing walls that Paul talks about. We need to break down these walls if we want to be effective in living out our mission and designing our vision.
So, let’s take a look at this tool. I need a helper to come up. Tim, you’re up. The tool is actually pretty simple. Think of it as a window pane with four sections.
The first section is called OPEN. What this means is that there are aspects of our behavior and out motivation that we know about, and that others know about. African-American, make, gifted musician, singer and composer. We know those things and Tim knows those things. If we were building a list, those types of things go in the OPEN pane.
The second pane is the BLIND area. This is where others can see things in us, and we are unaware. An example is that we might see that Tim has spinach in his teeth. We are all usually uncomfortable about this blind side, but good things can happen there. For instance, I love when Tim gives us an introduction to the songs and the anthems, but unless I say to Tim that I appreciate it and that he does a great job, he might otherwise be blind to that aspect of his behavior. So the Blind pane represents others seeing something in us that we are not aware of.
The third pane is HIDDEN. This pane represents things we know but do not reveal to others. Think about a hidden agenda. Think about the things we hide from one another. Think about the church at Ephesus. I suspect that there were folks in the church who would not accept gentiles in the church no matter what. Some other folks might have been more flexible. We all have areas where our feelings are sensitive. Maybe you can’t imagine our Queen Anne church doing anything different than it does now, and you find discussion about doing something new to be annoying. What sometimes gets us into trouble is that we keep these deep feelings hidden, but what it looks like to other folks is barriers. So, this pane represents those deep hidden feelings that we do not like to share. This pane is all about lack of trust and vulnerability. By showing our vulnerability, we move things from the HIDDEN pane to the OPEN pane where we can deal with them. Tim can sit.
This last pane is UNKNOWN. I love this pane. This pane represents things that Tim doesn’t know about himself, and that we don’t know about Tim. It sounds a bit odd right? I call this the Holy Spirit pane because this is where the Spirit can intervene to take us places we never thought we could go.
It was not easy in the early church for Jews and gentiles to come together in worship. Many would have said, no gentiles in the church. We know how this sounds; blacks and whites cannot worship together; women cannot be in leadership roles, no gays in the pulpit. There were struggles and misunderstandings. The two groups fought over power and leadership. Neither the Jews nor the gentiles thought that they could make it work.
And yet, the Holy Spirit had another plan. The Spirit of Christ took the early church to a new place. After much discussion, there was agreement, if the gentiles wanted to follow Jesus, they were welcomed. They didn’t have to be Jewish. In fact, anyone who professed Jesus as God's son and savior of humanity, was welcome. Paul says, ‘you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.’ And so the circle of God's love grew a little bit wider.
I have had personal experience with this UNKNOWN pane. A friend was sharing a dream that she had, and it was only upon discussing the dream did she get meaning from the dream. It resulted in a life change for her. We did not start that process with her knowing, or with me knowing, but in the midst of discussion, the Sprit made things known. This pane sounds odd, but it probably is not unusual.
So that is the Jo-Hari window; a tool that we can use to get to know one another better so that we might better hear and understand God’s call to us.
The window shows us that each of us has parts that we easily share, parts that remain hidden; each of us has a blind side, and each of us has the opportunity for new discovery. We are incomplete, and we are capable of change. Christ tells us that the last word has not been said. The future remains open, mysterious, and surprising, all by God’s wonderful grace.
Jew or gentile, slave or free, male or female, we belong to one who has chosen and called us, and has made us part of a community. In the midst of that community we get to dive more deeply into the faith, living the story of God’s love in Christ, loving our world, loving neighbors, strangers and even enemies in our midst. And in this community is the opportunity for even more discovery as we are called forward.
Like the church at Ephesus, we share, we hide, and we have our blind side, and we discover. We live in the unknown, and it is there that we find an awesome, passionate God who pushes and urges us to shape a new future with new and divine possibilities.
Our unknown future of divine possibilities may not always be bright and successful. Everything will not always feel OK. Our unknown future may include pain and failure and mistakes, but we will not lose sight of our mission. We will not lose sight of the vision Paul gives us where everyone is welcome into a deeper relationship with Christ.
Our future is unknown, but we know it to be good because it is of God and a gift of the Spirit. We know that God is stronger than failure and pain, mistakes and success, even despair and death. I invite you to pray about our vision; to pray about the Unknown. I invite you embrace the work of the Spirit in you, in me, and in us together, as we start something new. May it be so. Amen
Queen Anne 
