"Let it Go" (reflection)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday August 11, 2024
Scripture Reading:  Colossians 3:12-17

Note:  Every summer, we gather weekly for Church Family Movie Nights; and this year we are linking our Sunday morning worship to the movie we watched the previous Tuesday. This week’s reflection is tied to the movie Frozen. You can read a summary of this movie by clicking here, or watch the trailer by clicking here.


Jesus liked to teach his listeners using parables – stories that contain a nugget (or often many nuggets) of wisdom that help his listeners better understand the message he is trying to get across.

 

And so today, I’m going to tell a teaching story too, though in the form of a fairy tale rather than a parable – a story that I think teaches some of the messages from the passage from Colossians that ______ just read for us.  The biggest difference between fairy tales and parables is that parables are usually grounded in familiar objects and people and situations, while fairy tales are set in far-away or even mythical times, with elements of the magical or fantastical.  But both contain kernels of truth or wisdom.

 

And so let our story begin:

 

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there were two sisters who lived in a castle. The elder of the sisters was born with a special talent that was both a gift and a curse. Everything that she touched with her hand or her foot froze and turned to ice and snow.

 

When she was young, the sisters would play with her gift, creating skating rinks in the great hall, and building snowman companions.  But then one day, the gift became a curse, and some of the magic from the elder sister injured the younger sister. Her parents took her to visit the healer trolls who told them that they could cure their daughter as the magic had hit her head – a frozen head could be thawed, but a frozen heart could not.

 

When they returned home, the parents told their first-born child that her gift was not a gift at all, it was a curse. She had to stay away from all human contact in case she caused harm to another. Because she was angry at herself for the harm she had caused to her sister, the elder sister obliged.  She lived behind a closed door.  She wore gloves at all times.  She tried to control her emotions, as feeling her emotions led to less control over her magic.

 

The years passed.  The sisters grew up.  Their parents died, and it was time for the firstborn sister to inherit the throne. For the first time, she was going to have contact with other people.

 

And it all went wrong. Her guilt over what she had done to her sister, her disgust about her curse, her anxiety about causing more harm all came together, her frozen magic flowed out of control, and the whole kingdom labeled her a monster.

 

She tried to isolate herself even more. She ran alone into the mountains, and let the magic take over her body.  Winter took over the land.

 

Her younger sister was the only one who cared for her as a person, and thought that she could be the one to bring her sister back and end the eternal winter.  But when she found her sister in the mountains, her sister’s magic hit her for a second time, this time freezing her heart.

 

The healer trolls were dismayed.  You see, a frozen heart isn’t as easy to thaw as a frozen head.  The only thing to thaw a frozen heart and save her life was an act of true love.

 

Having read all of the fairy tales, the younger sister thought that true love’s kiss was the thing to save her. But the prince she thought she loved proved false, and the peasant boy she had learned to love was too far away.

 

But when her older sister came down from her ice palace in the mountains to find her younger sister, the townspeople saw her and wanted to kill the monster. The younger sister, knowing that she was dying from a frozen heart, stepped in front of her older sister and was turned to an ice statue and saved her older sister’s life.

 

In that moment, the older sister forgave herself for harming her younger sister.  She forgave her parents for keeping them apart. And in that moment of forgiveness, the ice of her frozen younger sister began to melt.

 

You see, it wasn’t a kiss from a prince that was an act of true love needed to break the magic – it was the self-sacrificial love of one sister for another that could make her whole.

 

And with that healing, and with that forgiveness, the two sisters were restored to one another. The older sister was able to embrace her gift as not just a curse but a blessing as well, and together the sisters were able to face the future.

 

So maybe this story is a bit longer than the parables that Jesus told; and maybe it involves magic rather than everyday people and situations, but I think that this story does teach us about the passage from Colossians that we heard earlier.  It is a story about a story.  Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.  Forgive each other.  Clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.  Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.  Be thankful.

 

To me, Frozen is a story about forgiveness and reconciliation.  Ana, the younger sister, easily forgave Elsa, her older sister, for harming her with her magic, both when they were young and when they were older.  She even forgave Elsa for isolating herself within the castle and later in the mountains.  She didn’t let her pain and anger hold her back – all she wanted was to have the relationship with her older sister that they had had when they were young.

 

Elsa, on the other hand, struggles with forgiveness – not necessarily forgiveness of another person, but forgiveness of herself.  She struggles to forgive herself for hurting Ana when they were young.  She struggles to forgive herself for causing an eternal winter.

 

One of my mentors describes withholding forgiveness as being like letting someone or something occupy space in your head, rent-free.  Until you can let go of the pain, it will continue to weigh you down and keep you from moving on from it.  And until Elsa could forgive herself, she and Ana could never be reconciled – they could never rebuild a relationship because her lack of forgiveness was holding her back.  Reconciliation is only possible when both parties seek it – if only one party is able to forgive and seek to restore the relationship, it can’t happen, as both sides are needed for a true relationship.

 

In the movie, it was only when Elsa witnessed Ana’s selfless love – throwing herself between Elsa and the murderous crowd – that she was finally able to let go of the hurt she was carrying – to finally forgive herself.  And then, through the magic of fairytales, Ana’s selfless act of true love for her sister unfroze her heart and her body and the sisters were re-united and reconciled.

 

As Paul writes in Colossians, clothe yourselves with kindness and with love; let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts; and forgive each other… to which I would add, “and forgive yourself.”  And then, then we can truly be one community, the Body of Christ.

 

And may it be so.  Amen.

 

 

 

Sometimes a “frozen” world is beautiful!

Photo Credit: K. Jones