The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

His thoughts soared far beyond the stars, but he worried about the wind. He had, in a sense, waited his whole life to preach this sermon. “He lived his life in crescendo,” a later admirer wrote, and this was to be a kind of climax. He had a dazzling vision to unfold, a soaring theology to set forth. He had friends to comfort and eternity to hold before their gaze. If only the wind would cooperate. If only his lungs could hold up. If only his voice would carry. If only he could find the words to match his message.

I thank each of you for your attendance here, for the lovely invocation and the splendid music we had, and for that introduction. I’m pleased to be with you today, my sisters. Your Tolkien theme, “deep roots are not reached by the frost,” might well have had added to it, “nor are they scorched by the sun.” Jesus described the realities of that scorching sun when he talked in these terms, “and some fell upon the stony places where they had not much Earth and forthwith they sprung up because they had no deepness of Earth. And when the sun was up, they were scorched. And because they had no root, they withered away” (Matthew 13:5–6).