Snow White 12.12.2024

    Fairy tales are a part of our culture. Even as adults we are not immune from them. We read them and enjoy them, we read them to our children and grandchildren, we watch the motion pictures “based” upon them, and we preachers often use them to illustrate sermons. 

    Yes, the Disney folk often transform them. If you’ve ever read some of the original tales in Grimm and compared them with what you listened to on some loved-one’s lap, you find no fault with such a procedure. Most of the tales we loved as children in the 20th century had already been through the transformation from rustic, realistic, and rough stories to the more domesticated fare one reads to children. 

    Disney’s adoption of Snow White was a watershed in colored, animated film making. While we still treasure the story one imagines contemporary parents being shocked at some of the actual content. Greed. Jealousy. Evil. Anger. Murder. We don’t typically tuck our children into bed with such adult themes. In our world we use the basics of the story to inculcate the virtues of Snow White in opposition to the vices of the evil queen. “Night Night!”

There is another way to understand the story. 

    Once upon a time there was a beautiful bride. She was made pure, not by her own innate virtues but by the loving intervention of her bridegroom who provided a kiss of life that restored the prospects lost to her in competition with the powers of evil let loose in this world. 

    Now, the endgame was years, centuries-even millennia in the making. The evil the princess experienced was personal, institutional, and communal. She was a victim both of her own innocence and her own self-will. While she sheltered and was sheltered by those she knew and loved; her place in the world was forever changed by the evil she experienced. The final act of fatal evil was a seemingly harmless apple which, though sweet to the taste, was deadly to consume. 

    Her prince came to her, not on a noble charger but upon a humble donkey. His intervention was not a literal, physical kiss but his own embrace of her fallenness and failure. To end her suffering and wake her from seemingly eternal suffering, he took that suffering upon himself. Thus, having released Snow White from her prison of death, he was able (some graces are not susceptible to simple explanation) to claim her has his newly awakened bride. White as Snow. 

“…and his Bride has made herself ready; Revelation 19:8 it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure”—for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.” (Revelation 19:7-8 ESV)

    This is not a fairy tale. It is not a romantic children’s story. This is our Gospel. Snow White is awakened by her Lord not from simple slumber but from lingering death—a death caused by the poisoned apple of sin. Snow White has been awakened not to testify her own virginal purity but to the purity of the one who undeservedly tasted of death to redeem her. Snow White has been called to bear witness to her Bridegroom by using her renewed life to describe His love, live for His purposes, and to indulge in His blessings. This is no fairy tale. This is the reality we celebrate at Christmas. 

  that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, Ephesians 5:27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” (Ephesians 5:26-27 ESV)

    When the babe was born His disembodied Church was mortally afflicted. While His own mother nursed and nurtured Him the crushing wheel of Imperial hatred bore down not only on His people, but all people. His life of loving ministry, the words of life preserved in His Gospel are the clarion call to His bride to join Him in a renewed garden to partake only of refreshing, redeeming fruit. 

Snow White is not a Christmas story. We have lots of those. We will watch them, tell them, sing them, and celebrate them. In hearts aflame with faith we will be given, perhaps just briefly a full look at the redeemed bride, whose snow-white gown has been cleansed by the shed blood of Jesus. Prince of Peace. Lord of Lords. Redeemer of His Snow-White Bride. 

“Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, “And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from    God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” (Revelation 21:2 ESV)