Bread and Wine by the Sea...of Tranquility, that Is.

It was July 10, 1969. I was 12 years old and I can distinctly remember that the old movie "Joan of Arc" was playing on television that night. But there is another memory. During a commercial I stepped outside and looked up into the night sky at the moon. It was an event to remember, for at that very moment there were men standing on the surface of the moon and broadcasting their reports earthward.

I remember marvelling that mankind had made such an achievement. During the course of that event, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface and spoke these words, "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind".

However, astronaut Buzz Aldrin gives us details which are generally unknown to the average person. He describes one of the first acts after stepping onto the surface of the moon, that is, the sharing of the Lord's Supper. He wrote, “I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given us.

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.” I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but in the last minute Deke Slayton had requested that I do not do this. NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle with Madylyn Murray O’Hare, the celebrated opponent of religion, over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon on Christmas. I agreed reluctantly."

Aldrin goes on to say that he ate the bread and drank the wine and gave thanks for the intelligence and Spirit that had brought two young pilots across the Sea of Tranquility. "It was interesting for me to think that the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first eaten there were the communion elements".

It is certainly a sign of the times when general opinion holds that great scientific minds and thinks of the day must also be antagonistic towards faith, and especially the Christian faith. Carl Sagan, the well known host of numerous scientific programs on PBS, and considered by most to be a brilliant scientists of our day, was extremely vocal about his views that science and faith have nothing in common. But it has not always been so.

Sir Isaac Newton was one of the most brilliant minds of his day. He was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived.
In this work, Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries.

But our children are not taught in school that Newton, though unorthodox in many of his views, still spent more of his life studying scripture and writing on religion than he ever did on scientific themes. Whether we agree with all of his views or not, nevertheless there was no disconnect between his theological works and his brilliant scientific genius.

Today, creationists are mocked in the public forum, and faith is divorced from science, as if the two can never be compatible. However, true science will in the end come into perfect harmony with the Word of God. The Bible says that it is the fool who has said in his heart, 'There is no God'.

The next time you look up at the moon, think about this fact. That one of the leaders of our day in the scientific community, a pioneer in space travel, thought that commemorating the Lord's Supper on the moon was the  most important and noteworthy thing that he could do, making it a priority immediately following 'mankind's great step'. When you come to the Lord's Supper on Sunday mornings, what is your attitude? Is it just a token of the day, to be checked off of the list of religious duties? Or is it a monumental thing...a memorial to the most important event in human history.

Imagine standing on the surface of the moon, holding the bread and the cup, and looking up at the earth suspended in space above you, and being able to see the African and Asian continents and to identify that one little spot, Israel, where that greatest event took place. Imagine looking up at Israel, while putting the cup to your lips.

If 'The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows His handiwork"...imagine viewing that from out there...looking back upon earth and all the glory with which God has clothed it.

One day that will not be beyond our reach.