Truth In Space
The year was 1969 and Edwin E. Aldrin was an elder at a Presbyterian church in Texas. Knowing that he would soon be doing something unprecedented in human history, he felt he should mark the occasion somehow. So, he asked his Church Minister to help him. So the minister prepared for Aldrin a communion wafer and a small vial of communion wine. Buzz Aldrin took them with him out of the Earth’s orbit and onto the surface of the moon.
Aldrin and Neil 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 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 words of Jesus from the scripture:
I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. (John 15:5)
I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but at the last minute, they had requested that I not do this as 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 wafer and swallowed the wine, I gave thanks for the Intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquillity. It was interesting for me that the very first liquid 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.’
Aldrin’s brief and private Christian service never caused a flap, but it could have.
Aldrin himself wrote of the Communion in a magazine in October 1970, a little over a year after the moon landing. I wonder how many people actually knew this? Too bad this type of news doesn’t travel as fast as does bad news.
We give thanks to God who created the heaven and the earth. (Genesis 1:1)