Remarks made by the Rev. William P. Baxter, Jr. to the ICJS Board of Directors on February 26, 2007 on the occasion of his retirement as a trustee. Bill has retired as the rector of St. Thomas' Episcopal Church after 28 years of service and
is moving to Florida. Bill's dedication to the work of the ICJS over many years has been a blessing to all of us.

I want to propose for your consideration a phrase I used last summer in a sermon I delivered after my return from the Na-tional Convention of the Episcopal Church. As you may know, our Church along with most mainline Christian denominations has been struggling for the past 30 years with human sexuality and, more fundamentally, with how we are to honor the texts from both Hebrew and Christian scripture which touch on these things. I know, too, that various Jewish organizations are doing the same thing.

Among Episcopalians and in our world-wide affiliation, the Anglican Communion, there is a deep rift which touches upon Biblical truth, but also cultural considerations. To oversimplify: Anglicans in the third-world nations of Africa and East Asia are deeply offended by the ways in which Anglicans in the US and Canada have sought to understand and interpret traditional Biblical injunctions -- especially regarding homosexuality.

As we move through this difficult time, I suggested that we need to submit ourselves to what I call "the corrective of diversity," a phrase which caught the attention of some of our scholars.

"The corrective of diversity" -- what I mean is this: In my experience we humans have an almost infinite ability to "fake ourselves out," to imagine that we are listening and learning and growing while only talking with others who believe what we believe and feel what we feel. Out of the pain and ex-haustion of the theological struggle, some have said, "Let Anglican brothers and sisters who disagree with us go their own way. Let's do a bit of ‘holy pruning.’" I say, "Not yet!" I continue to believe that we need each other to submit to the "corrective of diversity" that we might all grow together.

Perhaps you can see where I am going with this. Just as a willingness to listen to the "other" with heart and head might serve us Christians well, so too the same model sums up a core value upon which the ICJS is founded and operates. We people of faith in a living God, who created and sustains Jew and Christian and even Muslim, need each other. We believe that as we study together, listen together, tell our stories one to another -- we believe that out of the studying and listening and telling -- we will grow in appreciation, not only of the "other," but of ourselves. This process is submission to the "corrective of diversity."

I'll close with a story, for it not only sums up my own belief, but I think it describes what we in this Institute are up to in this broken world of ours.

Here is a favorite scene from Frederick Buechner's novel Brendan:

Brendan, the old Irish saint, has been talking with another saintly man named Gildas. At the end of the conversation, Gildas begins to stand. Then, Buechner has the narrator say:

Pushing down hard with his fists on the tabletop, [Gildas] heaved himself up to where he was standing. For the first time we saw he wanted one leg. It was gone from the knee joint down. He was hopping sideways to reach for his stick in the corner when he lost his balance. He would have fallen in a heap if Brendan hadn't leaped forward and caught him. "I'm crippled as the dark world," Gildas said. "If it comes to that, which one of us isn't, my dear?" Brendan said. Gildas with his but one leg, Brendan sure he'd misspent his whole life entirely. Me that had left my wife to follow him and buried our only boy. The truth of what Brendan said stopped all our mouths. We was cripples all of us. For a moment or two there was no sound but the bees. "To lend each other a hand when we're falling," Brendan said, "Perhaps that's the only work that matters in the end."