ARE YE ABLE [W, 6-18-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of an Old Man--ARE YE ABLE [W, 6-18-25]

 

Lorraine Brugh died recently, much too young, at age 72. I have written about her before. In fact, I’m going to repeat my column of 9-2-10…

Lorraine Brugh teaches organ at Valparaiso University. She has doctorates in both organ and theology. She did the theology doctorate just because she felt she had to know the theology behind the worship music to be able to interpret and teach the music adequately. That’s real devotion.

She led one of the weekends at the Grace Institute, a two-year Lutheran program for learning about and becoming more spiritual. I was one of the few non-Lutherans, and the only Methodist, in the program.

At meals and free times, a group of young women Lutheran pastors, four to six, according to the occasion, coalesced around me. I suspect it was because I treated them as colleagues when older male Lutheran pastors were less receptive to them. Or maybe it was just my animal magnetism.

One lunch period, Lorraine and I were eating together. When the meal was over, my group of young Lutheran women pastors came and joined us.

One of them asked us about Methodist theology. Lorraine has always been a Lutheran, but she got her theology doctorate at Garrett, a United Methodist school, at Northwestern U, while she was doing her organ degrees at Northwestern.

“I’ve always thought Methodism was primarily active theologically, rather than just intellectual,” she said. “You try to do the right thing first, and only then you think about it. It’s a very heroic faith. Your hymn is ‘Are Ye Able.’”

That surprised me for a moment. I would have said our hymn was “O For a Thousand Tongues.” It’s a Wesley hymn, after all. But I think Lorraine was right. For American Methodism of the 20^th century, Earl Marlatt’s “Are Ye Able” was our hymn. [1]

Then Lorraine started to sing it. But being non-Methodist, she began to falter on the words. So I joined in and we sang it together.

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 a beacon shall be

A beacon to God, to love, and loyalty.

 

Are ye able to remember when a thief lifts up his eyes

That his pardoned soul is worthy of a place in paradise?

Lord, we are able, our spirits are thine

Remold them, make us, like thee, divine

Thy guiding radiance a beacon shall be

A beacon to God, to love, and loyalty.

 

Are ye able when the shadows close around you with the sod

To believe that spirit triumphs, to commend your soul to God?

Lord, we are able, our spirits are thine

Remold them, make us, like thee, divine

Thy guiding radiance a beacon shall be

A beacon to God, to love, and loyalty.

 

Are ye able? Still the Master whisper down eternity,

And heroic spirits answer, now as then in Galilee.

Lord, we are able, our spirits are thine

Remold them, make us, like thee, divine

Thy guiding radiance a beacon shall be

A beacon to God, to love, and loyalty.

 

Heroic, indeed, perhaps unrealistically so. That hymn still stirs me, though. It’s a sung response to Jesus’ call to forsake everything to follow him.

The young Lutheran pastors looked a bit astonished as we sang.

When we finished, they had tears running down their unwrinkled cheeks. The tears were probably the audacity of my scratchy bass intruding on Lorraine’s clear soprano, but I prefer to think it was because, even though Lutheran, they are able.

John Robert McFarland

[1] It’s # 530 in the Methodist hymnal. Marlatt wrote it in 1926. Henry S. Mason wrote the music in 1924. It was my mother-in-law’s favorite hymn when Helen was growing up, even though she was a Baptist.