Bowling Green Covenant Church

The Traveler’s Advisory Friday

21 July 2006

“For God made two great lights, the sun and the moon, to shine down upon the earth. The greater one, the sun, presides during the day; the lesser one, the moon, presides through the night. He also made the stars.”—Genesis 1.16 [NLT]

What happened July 20, 1969? Do the words, “Houston, Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed,” jog your memory? On July 20, 1969 Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin became the first human beings from earth to land a spacecraft on the moon. Later that day, they became the first human beings to walk on the lunar surface. Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the lunar surface, is remembered for saying, “That’s one small step for man. One giant leap for mankind.”

The landing was an anxious adventure. Armstrong had landed the lunar module, the Eagle, manually, but just barely, with only 15 seconds of fuel left. Soon after landing, the two astronauts prepared for their excursion on the lunar surface. Before doing so, Buzz Aldrin did something many people neither know about nor remember.

What Aldrin did might be dismissed as the stuff of urban legend and myth. It is not. It happened. The event is described in his book Men From Earth, and is included as part of a review of the book by Fred Howard that appeared in the NY Times, July 2, 1989:

“After the two astronauts in the lunar module Eagle had landed on the moon’s Sea of Tranquility, but before taking those first uncertain steps on the moon’s surface, they broadcast back to Earth. Mr. Aldrin, a religious man, was bent on giving thanks for a safe moon landing but he had been forbidden to do so. Complaints had been received when a former Apollo crew had read on the air passages from Genesis the previous Christmas Eve while orbiting the moon, and NASA wanted no more confrontations with antireligious groups. After requesting silence, Mr. Aldrin opened a miniature Communion kit prepared by his Presbyterian pastor and poured out sacramental wine from a vial ‘about the size of the tip of my little finger’ into a tiny chalice, observing that in the moon’s light gravity the liquid swirled about the miniature chalice more like syrup than wine. Before going back on the air, he ate a tiny Host and swallowed the wine and silently ‘gave thanks for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility.’

Aldrin’s celebration of Communion on the moon adds depth to Genesis 1.16. It also enriches the texture of Scriptures such as Psalm 19.1, “The heavens tell the glory of God. The skies display His marvelous craftsmanship,” and Psalm 24, “The earth is the LORD’s and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to Him.”

As long as there are people on earth, and on the moon, God will be worshiped. He is to be worshiped because He created the earth, the moon and the universe. He also created humankind. And He gave men and women the intelligence, creativity and courage to dream big dreams and risk it all on big dares. Thus it is a melancholic moment when an anniversary of such importance passes unnoticed—not because it fails to celebrate human achievement, but because by forgetting such an achievement we forget to honor God who made it possible.

Ah, but there is Communion. And we are brought full circle to remembering an event of even far greater importance and meaning than men landing on the moon. And perhaps that is what Buzz Aldrin also gave thanks for that July day on the moon thirty-seven years ago. Perhaps it is what we should be thankful for as well, now and always until the Lord comes back.

You think about that.

MM