The Lives of Others

I got a chance to watch an interesting movie last night.  It was called "The Lives of Others". It's a German film with English subtitles.  It dealt with a member of the East German Secret Police during the Cold War.  Our officer was assigned to 'round the clock surveillance on a playwright who seemed loyal to the Communist Party but aroused suspicious.  Through the use of "bugs" the police could hear every word he said in his East Berlin apartment.  Since high-ranking party officials were out to get him for various reasons, his future didn't look bright.

The theme of the story was how listening to true art and true goodness through those wiretaps changed the life of the secret police enforcer.  The movie was quite well-written and well-acted.  I enjoyed it.

The part that struck me for our purposes is how different the plot and pace of the film turned out to be from the usual Hollywood stuff we see.  This was a film about spying, oppression by the state, using your talent to stand up for what's right, and defending your friends.  The first part of the movie probably wasn't much different than it would have been had it been produced in America.  But with all of those heroics leaking through the characters, the Berlin Wall providing a tangible and near-unbreakable barrier between the East Germans and freedom, and a secret police force involved, had this story been filmed in the U.S. it would have climaxed with a thrilling escape, gunfire, tunneling under the Wall while bad guys dogged your heels.  American film producers would have felt the story needed more punch at the end, more overt tension, more reasons to spend a special effects budget.

"The Lives of Others" contained none of that.  Its ending was both good and tense, but the story stayed solidly framed on the characters and the relationships between them, not on some huge manufactured thrill-moment.

Isn't life like that though?  Seldom do our greatest joys come in whiz-bang events.  They happen through the patient unrolling of threads between us as we're knit together.  We spend far too much time looking for happiness or excitement in events and circumstances.  We tend to underrate the happiness and excitement that comes through discovering each other.

Our youth ministry follows this pattern.  If you came to a single event you'd probably think it was nice, but not out of the ordinary.  But over time a hundred ordinary moments weave us together into something extraordinary.  I sometimes tell the kids, "It's not what you do that makes life fun, but who you do it with."  Waxing the kitchen floor with people you enjoy is a great afternoon.  Going to Disneyland with people you hate is a pain.

We can also learn a lesson about worship here.  Some people base their opinion of church on what kind of services that church conducts on a Sunday morning.  If they like the music and the liturgy it's a good church.  If not it's lousy.  Heaven forbid anyone should change anything once it's set!

Any kind of worship can be better or worse, really.  The style of worship doesn't matter as much as the people participating in it.  People with less faith and less room in their heart for their neighbors must insist upon one kind of worship--the kind they like--or their church experience is ruined.  People with more faith and room in their heart for their neighbors can find goodness in just about any kind of liturgy or song.  The latter group knows that it's not about the notes on the page, it's about the people that they're together with and the God in whose name they gather.

Like our German film-making friends did here, we need to spend more time concentrating on people and relationships and maybe a little less time basing our lives, our judgment, and our contentment on events or circumstances.  The beauty in people is more subtle but also much more profound and enduring once discovered.

I'm not sure I would have remembered this movie had they gone for the typical ending.  They kept me focused on the people instead of the action and now it'll stick with me much longer.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)