Our first glimpse is of the universe.
Swirling galaxies, star-shadowed planets, a dim, rust-orange sun, followed by a zooming close-up of the earth.
Only, it’s an earth we’re unfamiliar with, an earth where the mountains aren’t mountains at all, but mounds of waste and debris.
It is a post-apocalyptic earth whose only guardian is a small robot named Wall-E.
It’s sort of a startling opening for a kids’ movie especially given the juxtaposition of what we see—a dead earth—with what we hear—Michael Crawford, as Cornelius, singing Put on Your Sunday Clothes from the musical Hello Dolly.
And what’s even more interesting is that it’s the song, not the vision of an abandoned earth that sets up the theme of the story.
Cornelius sings in Put on Your Sunday Clothes:
“Put on your Sunday clothes.
There’s lots of world out there.
… we’ll see the shows at Delmonico’s
And we’ll close the town in a whirl.
And we won’t come home until we’ve kissed a girl!”
For the robot, Wall-E, watching Hello Dolly gives him hope. He sees the world how it once was and he knows that even though he is alone, that is not the way the world was meant to be.
It is Wall-E’s search for companionship that makes this movie ultimately one that teaches us what it means to be human.
In Epic: The Story God is Telling, John Eldredge spends a whole chapter on the importance of fellowship and relationship in the human experience.
He writes that “Loneliness might be the hardest cross we bear,” and “Whatever else it means to be human, we know beyond a doubt that it means to be relational. Aren’t the greatest joys and memories of your life associated with family, friendship, or falling in love?”
We spend our lives finding ways to combat loneliness. We work together, we work-out together, we go to the movies, we go out to dinner and yet, for me, for many years, the loneliest day of the week was Sunday.
Not anymore.
I went to church this morning and last Wednesday night and last Tuesday night even though I was either sick or so weak from being sick that I could hardly stand.
I didn’t go to church because I felt obligated to go. I didn’t go out of a sense of duty—this is what good Christians do, this is what I must do to get to Heaven—I went for the fellowship. I went to worship, not alone, but with others whose goodwill always lifts me up.
I put on my Sunday clothes (which these days include jeans and sneakers) and I rested … not by myself, but in the company of others, people who always seem to bring me closer to God.
