4) Communion on the Moon
July 20, 1969, article by Eric Metaxas.
Forty-two 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
(LM) 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.
And a few years ago I had the privilege of meeting him myself. I asked him about it and he confirmed the story to me, and I
wrote about in my book
Everything You Always Wanted to Know
About God (But Were Afraid to Ask).
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 minister to help him. And so the minister 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."
--from SSTN: you can find Eric Metaxes' book in
our affiliate bookstore by typing the title into the search box on the following
page:
http://www.sundayschoolnetwork.com/bookstore.html
and to learn more about Eric Metaxes, listen to his humorous speech at the
2012 National Prayer Breakfast at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jotOExbddI4
