ARE YE ABLE? [R, 6-10-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

ARE YE ABLE?         [R, 6-10-21]

 

“Do you know who that is?” someone at our table in the Garrett Theological Seminary dining room said. “That’s Earl Marlatt.”

Well, I certainly knew who Earl Marlatt was, the composer of the quintessential hymn of 20^th century American Methodism, the best heroic hymn ever [Well, maybe second to Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic”], “Are Ye Able?” [# 530 in The Methodist Hymnal.]

“Are ye able, said the master, to be crucified with me? Yea, the sturdy dreamers answered, to the death we follow thee. Lord, we are able, our spirits are thine. Remold them, make us, like thee, divine. Thy guiding radiance, above us shall be, a beacon to God, to love and loyalty.”

But this slight old man in an even older black suit didn’t look very able, for anything, yet alone following Jesus to the death, especially to this healthy seminary student in his early 20s. But he wrote it in 1926, when he was 38, undoubtedly feeling more able then.

That day when he came up to Garrett, he had been retired for several years, in Winchester, Indiana, a town of fewer than five thousand people. Even though Winchester bills itself as “The Sugar Cream Pie Capital of the World,” there isn’t much to do there, and old people get nostalgic about their glory days, when they were able. So Earl drove up to Evanston, the closest Methodist seminary, to relive his able days, and looked so lost as he tried to find someone, anyone, who would listen to his memories.

Part of his lost look was surely because of his educational pedigree. He had grown up as a Methodist PK in Indiana, and gone to the Methodist “Ivy League of the Midwest,” Greencastle’s Depauw University, where the best and brightest of future Methodist preachers were supposed to study, and then gone on to Boston University School of Theology, which was the prestige seminary in those days, instead of to Garrett, in Evanston, where the lesser preacher boys had to go, close to home, so that they could have a weekend church appointment to pay their bills.

 All that is a long way to get to the story of Prof. Samuel Lauechli of Garrett telling the story of the student who transferred from Garrett to Boston and in doing so raised the level of both institutions. Maybe Marlatt looked wary because he had heard that and knew he was in Lauechli territory.

Anyway, around the cafeteria that day, we who felt we were so able pitied the lost old man who had--in our view, we who were yet to prove our ability, but who wanted so much to be “sturdy dreamers”--only written about being able.

I’m old now, older than Earl Marlatt was then. I think back to Earl’s lonely day and know that I don’t want to be pathetic and pitied, so I stay out of places where that might happen.

I think that’s why old people withdraw from so many places, even though younger people tell us we must not withdraw, because we need “socialization,” whatever that is. We don’t want socialization. We want to be left alone so no one will pity us for being old.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not really anti-people. I would be glad to have someone I love holding my hand when I die, or even a sympathetic stranger, as happened so often with covid19 deaths.

But in the final analysis, in the last moment, there is no socialization. Jesus walked that lonely valley by himself. So must I. So must you. We come into the world with help from strangers, and we exit the same way, but our soul is ours alone, and “soul” is who we really are.

“Are ye able, when the shadows, close around you with the sod, to believe that spirit triumphs, to commend you soul to God? Yes, we are able…”

Thank you, Earl, for continuing to remind us, every time we sing your song.

John Robert McFarland