[43 years ago two human beings changed history by walking on the surface of
the moon. But what happened before Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong exited the
Lunar Module is perhaps even more amazing, if only because so few people
know about it. I’m talking about the fact that Buzz Aldrin took communion on
the surface of the moon. Some months after his return, he wrote about it in
Guideposts magazine. Here is an adaptation of that Interview.]
The background to the story is that Aldrin was an elder at his Presbyterian
Church in Texas during this period in his life, and knowing that he would
soon be doing something unprecedented in human history, he felt he should
mark the occasion somehow, and he asked his pastor to help him. And so the
pastor consecrated a communion wafer and a small vial of communion wine. And
Buzz Aldrin took them with him out of the Earth’s orbit and on to the
surface of the moon.
He and Armstrong had only been on the lunar surface for a few minutes when
Aldrin made the following public statement: “This is the LM pilot. I’d like
to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and
wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of
the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.” He then ended
radio communication and there, on the silent surface of the moon, 250,000
miles from home, he read a verse from the Gospel of John, and he took
communion.
Here is his own account of what happened: “In the radio blackout, I opened
the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured
the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity
of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the
cup. Then I read the scripture, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches.
Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit.. Apart from me you can
do nothing.’
I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but at the last
minute [they] had requested that I not do this. NASA was already embroiled
in a legal battle with Madelyn Murray O’Hare, the celebrated opponent of
religion, over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the
moon at Christmas. I agreed reluctantly. I ate the tiny Host and swallowed
the wine. I gave thanks for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two
young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility.
It was interesting for me to think: the very first liquid ever poured on the
moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements. And
of course, it’s interesting to think that some of the first words spoken on
the moon were the words of Jesus Christ, who made the Earth and the moon –
and Who, in the immortal words of Dante, is Himself the “Love that moves the
Sun and other stars.”
~~
Dr Bob Griffin
[email protected] www.grif.net
“Jesus Knows Me, This I Love!”