Fleeting Triumph
I’m going to start this morning by talking about Norwegian independence day, because that’s what one does on Palm Sunday, right?
To set the scene:
My most recent ministry was in a small Unitarian Universalist church just outside of a town of 400 people. The town was settled by Norwegian immigrants, and the church was founded by dissatisfied Norwegian Lutherans. For many years prior to my arrival there and up until two or three years ago, the big festival each year was Syttende Mai. Syttende Mai translates to 17th of May, and is the celebration of Norway’s independence from Sweden. Along with the parade and the refreshments and the classic car show and the flea market and a variety show that back in the day drew busloads of viewers for performances over the course of three days–alongside all those staples of a small town festival, on the Sunday closest to May 17 each year there was a worship service in the town park. One year it would be led by the Lutheran pastors, and all the Lutherans and UUs would attend. The next year it would be led by the Unitarian Universalist minister, and all the Lutherans and UUs would attend.
The first year I was responsible for the service I did some research, because while a Minnesota native, I’m not the least bit Norwegian. What I learned boggled my mind and became a theological touchstone for me.
Norway adopted a Constitution on May 17, 1814, but remained under Swedish rule for nearly one hundred years before independence was granted in 1905. But in every one of those 91 years (and still today), May 17 was celebrated. The country was under foreign rule. It was not self-governing. Not an independent nation. But its people celebrated Independence Day nevertheless. 91 times before the reality matched the celebration.
A bit later I’ll tell you why I told you this story today, far from the nearest Norwegian settlement and not even in the month of May, but first, an event that happened much closer to us, both in geography and on the calendar: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Mountaintop Speech, on the eve of his assassination, fifty-five years ago this week.
It is easy to get distracted by the timing of the speech. By the fact of King saying one evening, “I may not get there with you” and being killed less than twenty-four hours later. To wonder and speculate. Did he know? How did he know? Maybe he had a premonition, a feeling. Or maybe, having survived a stabbing, and a bombing, and threats to his life multiple times, he had long since stopped taking any future for granted. Or maybe it was simply a rhetorical flourish, alluding as it so clearly does to Moses not making it into the Promised Land.
Dr. King was probably not also alluding to the Zen fable of
The Farmer’s Luck (sometimes called Maybe/Maybe Not)–though, scholar that he was, he may have known it. Nevertheless the section of the speech we listened to this morning includes a litany of triumphs. We could call them instances of Good Luck–though they were certainly not happenstance. Earlier in the speech Dr. King mentions some of the many impediments and barriers encountered along the way to the Promised Land to that date–Bull Conner, dogs, fire hoses, shackles, paddy wagons, jail cells. Bad Luck, if you will. The history of that Civil Rights movement to that point (and from that point onward) was and is one of fleeting triumph alternating with incidents or periods or seasons of cruelty, violence and death. Dr. King knew this. And whether or not he somehow knew his death was imminent, he knew that the final chapter of the Civil Rights movement hadn’t been written. He also knew that the final chapter would not be written in moments of seeming defeat yet to come, nor in moments of fleeting triumph yet to come.
I reflect on this snapshot of history today because this is Palm Sunday, and Passover begins on Thursday evening, and in their respective religions, both these holy times are moments of fleeting triumph, too.
The triumph of Palm Sunday wasn’t the end of Jesus’s story. Jesus knew it wasn’t the end of the story, and we know today it wasn’t the end of the story, but Christians celebrate it year after year, anyway. Celebrate Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, palms thrown at his feet, cries of Hosanna in the highest because he was recognized as, believed to be, the Son of David (code for the Messiah). Palm Sunday is celebrated even as believers know it is but prelude to the crucifixion. Palm Sunday is a maybe so; may not moment if there ever was one.
Likewise, Passover. The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart and the plagues and the ultimate flight in the night and the parting of the Red Sea–none of that is the end of that story. It’s all prelude to 40 years wandering in the desert, and murmuring about incompetent leaders, and Moses dying before reaching the promised land. The departure from enslavement in Egypt and the 40 years of wandering together comprise a maybe so/maybe not chapter in the history of the Israelites. Passover is a fleeting triumph. And everyone knows it. That’s why many Seders end with the aspiration next year in Jerusalem.
But the 40 years in the desert aren’t the end of the story, either. And neither the crucifixion nor the empty tomb early on the first day of the week are the end of that story. The full history of Judaism is still unwritten–awaiting the arrival of the Messiah. All the triumphs within its history are real but fleeting. The full history of Christianity is still unwritten–awaiting the second coming of Christ. All the triumphs within it real but fleeting.
The civil right movement, Judaism, Christianity–chapter after chapter of fleeting triumph interrupted and disrupted by harsh disappointments, violence, hatred, betrayal, dissatisfaction–the endings not yet written, after 55 years, after 6 millenia, after 2 millenia. And you know what else is composed of fleeting triumph, interrupted and disrupted by harsh disappointments, violence, hatred, betrayal, doubt, dissatisfaction? You do know what else is a succession of maybe so/maybe not moments, the final chapter not yet written: our lives.
The Jewish story of the exodus, and the Christian story of Holy Week, even Chesterton’s poem about the donkey tell us we are not alone in our experience of repeatedly grasping and losing hold of triumph. The story of the farmer teaches that given the fleeting nature of both good fortune and ill fortune we might do well to refrain from labeling our experiences as either good or ill, triumph or defeat, that attaching such labels, such judgments to our experience is folly. There is wisdom in that teaching but the letting go of attachment and judgment is the practice of a lifetime. And we don’t live at the end of a lifetime, when our detachment has been perfected. As Gwendolyn Brooks reminds us, we live in the along.
That’s why I introduced Syttende Mai into the discussion. The 19th century Norwegians believed that the King of Sweden’s refusal to grant Norway’s independence was not the final chapter in their history. It was ill fortune that would one day be reversed, so they skipped ahead and celebrated their independence anyway. Doubtless they also did things to hasten true independence–campaigns, perhaps, and negotiations and strikes and lobbying. But 91 years is a long time, even if you believe you’ll get independence eventually. So why not celebrate in the meantime? Why not celebrate the fleeting triumph of the creation of your constitution, the constitution you will one day live under? And why not celebrate the fleeting nature of the ill fortune, even as it still continues?
And we? We celebrate new love, knowing, secretly in our hearts, that it will someday end, even if only at death. We celebrate the births of children, knowing they will someday be teenagers. We celebrate October through April in Savannah, knowing May through September will come. We celebrate triumphs in the pursuit of civil rights, women’s rights, LGBTQI rights, asylum seekers rights, workers’ right, fleeting though they always are because the celebration is what keeps us going when maybe so turns into maybe not, one more time, in yet another rally of fear-based anger and greed-based injustice.
If a non-Norwegian preacher’s liberties with the history of Norway seem a flimsy ground for a theology of living in the along, then we can turn instead to thinker, writer, and strategist adrienne maree brown, who writes:
“put your attention on suffering – which is constant and everywhere – and it is all you will see. joy will come, and laughter, but you will find it brief, possibly a distraction.
put your attention on joy, being connected and feeling whole, and you will find it everywhere. your heart will still break. you will know grief. but you will find it a reasonable cost for the random abundance of miracles, and the soft wild rhythms of love.
return to love as many times as you can.”
The words of adrienne maree brown.
In the along we’re living in just now triumph seems more fleeting than ever. Victories at some polls are soon buried by defeats in other legislatures. Rare instances of justice get lost in swells of injustice. Lies drown out truth. Greed, hatred and violence seem to mock generosity, love, healing. Celebration can seem naive, foolhardy, a waste of energy, even a tool of continued oppression: focus on celebrating this small fleeting triumph here so you won’t notice the defeat building over there.
But joy and celebration and love rightly understood and practiced–yes, practiced–are in fact tools of resistance. Strengthening us for the battles that yet lie ahead. Stretching our capacity to inhabit the entirety of our existence and turn it toward the writing of the final chapter some distant day, when justice will take root everywhere, liberation will spread across the nations, and triumph at last will last. Shall we resist together, a congregation steeped in joy, celebrating every fleeting triumph that comes our way?