"Frozen" and the Power of Sacrificial Love

I always struggle with the sacrificial part of Lent.  As I've mentioned in a prior post, sacrifice is not big on the Protestant roster of Lenten activity.  We don't give up anything as a group, not even meat on Friday, which is pretty standard for my Roman Catholic friends and colleagues.  I could joke that some of us give up going to church on Sundays until Easter comes, but that might hit a little too close to the bone.  So imagine my surprise when the biggest example of sacrificial love I've seen this season showed up in Disney's latest film "Frozen."

This movie was not at all what I was expecting it to be.  I had viewed clips from the movie.  I had watched the  character Elsa transform during showstopping song "Let It Go," and watched the Academy Award show where John Travolta mangled Idina Menzel's name as he introduced her singing the nominated song shortly before it won the Oscar.  I thought the movie was about Elsa becoming this strong independent woman, with no idea that she wasn't even the main character.

No, the primary protagonist is her little sister, Anna - a young girl that Elsa unwittingly injures when they both are young and then shuts out of her life and her heart after that.  Thus Anna grows up longing for love and willing to look anywhere for it.  Through a series of unfortunate events, Elsa once again harms Anna, this time perhaps unto death, as her heart is pierced by the frost that her sister spews from her hands like Spiderman's webs.

Anna is told that only an "act of true love" can cure her heart, and at once goes in search of True Love's Kiss as the remedy to her ill.  In the middle of a blinding snowstorm, the two sisters, a good-hearted ice purveyor, and an evil prince are searching for each other, and when the prince attempts to kills Elsa with his sword, Anna runs from True Love's Kiss as it's being offered by the iceman and sacrificially throws herself in front of her sister, saving Elsa's life, and also her own, in the Act of True Love necessary to heal her.

Photo Courtesy of Disney

I've been reading "Bread and Wine" this Lenten season, writings by various authors and theologians on the aspects of Lent, and just finished the section on "Invitation."  Invitation, according to this particular devotional, is all about sacrificing oneself - one's heart, mind, soul, self - to God's glory.  An idea that I am on board with in theory, but it turns out am less so in practice.  Kierkegaard, in one of the more palatable essays, differentiates between Christ's Admirers and His Followers.  "The admirer never makes any true sacrifices.  He always plays it safe," Kierkegaard admonishes, whereas the follower fulfills "Christ's requirement to die to the world and deny self."

Thomas a Kempis is even harder to take: "When you get to the point where for Christ's sake suffering becomes sweet, consider yourself fortunate, for you have found paradise on earth...(r)ealize that to know Christ you must lead a dying life.  The more you die to yourself, the more you will live unto God."

This just seems to be the opposite of the Protestant work ethic and good old American self-determination.  Everything in me balks at the need to suffer in order to love God, much less that my willingness to suffer determines how much I actually do.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer clarifies in stating, "Self-denial can never be defined as some profusion - be it ever so great - of individual acts of self-torment or of asceticism...(s)elf-denial means knowing only Christ, and no longer oneself. It means seeing only Christ, who goes ahead of us, and no longer the path that is too difficult for us.  Again, self-denial is saying only: He goes ahead of us; hold fast to Him."

How interesting it is to me that the most powerful example that I've connected with in this Lenten season is in the story of an animated character's sacrificial love for another animated character.  Anna, who is willing to give up her own life to save that of her sister - a sister who has not (at least overtly) shown the least bit of love in return.  Yet Anna emulates the Christ, giving up everything in order that Elsa might live.  Unknowingly, unwittingly, instinctively, she holds fast to love - and I would argue, thus to Christ.  That may be a story I can get behind.

Give It Up!

Protestants are not big on Ash Wednesday. Or at least, the Presbyterian tradition in which I was raised and now serve, has never done a whole lot with it.  Long Island, where I currently reside, is predominantly Roman Catholic and thus the religious rituals observed on this day in the liturgical calendar are variously embraced, maligned, or ignored by other local Christian congregations.  The latter is the most common within my own community, although my Presbyterian colleagues express any range of responses from theirs.

So while many in ministry work on this day, it is, like any Wednesday in the calendar year, a Sabbath day for me.  I decided many years ago to take Wednesdays as my holy day.  My day of rest.  And so here I am, at home, not "working," pondering what I'm going to give up this year.

Protestants are also not big on giving things up for Lent.  That whole sacrificial ethos is not one that we particularly care for.  A people of the empty cross, we'd rather celebrate the resurrection than go through the death, much less acknowledge pain/suffering/sacrifice or choose to go through any of our own accord.  The Good Friday service is one of the most beautiful and meaningful that we hold at Sweet Hollow, but also the least well-attended - some years we've barely made it into double digits not including the choir.

So giving up something.  Should it be something physical, tangible like sugar or meat?  Should it be a behavior like slothfulness?  Or should be an attitude like anger or fear?  Those things would all be choices that would be "good" for me - leading me to eat more healthily, work out more regularly, better manage my emotions, etc.  Perhaps should it be something that I will really miss, something that is truly sacrificial, like reading or playing Candy Crush?

I don't even like to write about these options.  I shudder when I think about putting those two words together: "Give" and "Up."  When I think of giving something up, it makes me anxious, no matter what it is - even if I know that it will have positive benefits.

Yet it's kind of interesting seeing those two words capitalized and separate.  Give and Up.  I DO like Giving things.  I enjoy giving gifts to my daughter, my friends, my parishioners, those in need.  I get a charge out of buying lunch for a colleague, or sending a C.A.R.E. package to Grace or one of her friends who are away at school, or participating in the Souper Bowl Challenge feeding hungry people in Huntington.  And the word "Up" implies God to me - the Presence that we instinctively look upward toward.

Perhaps what I could do for Lent this year is Give my day Up to God.  Every morning.  Start each day intentionally (and perhaps even with words and physical movement) giving it up to God.  It's probably impossible.  I'll probably fail mightily.  But it's an idea my Presbyterian soul could get behind.  One Day at a Time.  I may not even have to take Sundays off from it, like I did when I gave up meat a few years ago!