Lift up your eyes
World Communion Sunday. Congregations here in Rockdale and all over the world will join together in observing Holy Communion, the Last Supper of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Many of us remember Sunday, July 21, 1969 when Neil Armstrong exited the Lunar Module, stepped onto the lunar surface and described the event as “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Even those of you who were not around then, have read and heard about it. But something else happened that historic day on the moon that in all likelihood you do not know about.
Two men walked on the moon that day, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Buzz Aldrin was a member and an elder in the Webster Presbyterian Church, just outside of Houston. For several weeks prior to the scheduled lift-off of Apollo 11 Buzz had been thinking about a meaningful symbol for the first lunar landing.
He struck on communion, one of the principal symbols of which is that God reveals himself in the common elements of everyday life. Traditionally, these elements are bread and wine. He talked with his minister about the idea, and he was enthusiastic. The next week he presented Buzz with a silver cup, light enough to be taken along.
On the day of the moon landing Neil and Buzz separated from Mike Collins in the command module. Their powered descent was right on schedule and they touched down at 3:30 p. m.
In a little while Neil would give the signal to step down on the surface of the moon. Now was the special moment. Buzz took out the bread and wine in their flight packets and placed them along with a scripture reading on a little table.
Then he placed a call. “Houston, this is the LM Pilot speaking. I would like to request a few moments of silence. I would like to invite each person listening in, wherever and whomever he may be, to contemplate for a moment the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his own way.”
Buzz poured the wine into the chalice the church had given him. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup. He placed the chalice of wine and the bread on the little table before him.
Next, he read the scripture he had chosen to indicate our trust that as man probes into space we are in fact acting in Christ: “I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, and I in him, will bear much fruit; for you can do nothing without me” (John 15:5).
Then he partook of the bread and wine.
And so it was. The first liquid poured and the first food eaten there was bread and wine when Buzz Aldrin took communion on the moon.
Clyde Nichols is a retired minister, having served First Christian Church in Temple for 27 years as senior minister. He is the author of three books of devotionals and writes a religious column for several Texas newspapers.
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