Buzz Aldrin and the Lord’s Supper
Fifty-two years ago (July 20, 1969) Buzz Aldrin, a Presbyterian elder at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Houston, quietly consumed Holy Communion with bread and wine he took with him to the moon for this purpose. He tried his best to synchronize the timing of this private event with his home church’s celebration of the eucharist. The Lunar Module from Apollo 11 had landed on the moon's surface, but Commander Neil Armstrong had not yet taken "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Both were extraterrestrial miracles, of course, but which is the greater: a man walking on the moon's surface, or the human experience of union (“commingling” - in the words of Cyril of Alexandria) with the Creator of the moon and stars in the grace offered in the Sacrament of Holy Communion? That God would offer one of these experiences each Sunday to the people he loves is the greatest kindness imaginable.
In a new and important essay, Ashley Null discusses his work of recent years on Thomas Cranmer’s commonplace notebooks on the eucharist. He shows how the church fathers, and especially Cyril of Alexandria (c. 376-444), deeply influenced Thomas Cranmer’s understanding of what happens in Holy Communion. Cyril, in his eleventh anathema against Nestorius, maintained that Christ’s humanity and divinity cannot be separated as Nestorius did when he talked about Jesus’s humanity on the earth while his divinity continued to fill the heavens. Cyril then went on to apply his christology to the undivided Christ in the Eucharist, and Cranmer picked up on this. Cranmer taught that, because Christ bodily ascended to heaven where he remains until the day he will return to bring heaven to earth, he is spiritually present in Holy Communion for those who receive the grace of the sacrament by faith. In addition Cranmer understood that, since Christ cannot be separated body and spirit, Communion reunites us to the whole Christ, body and spirit, in heaven. If we were baptized with him into death and raised with him in his resurrection (Rom 6) to be seated in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph 2), then the one time miracle of union with him 2,000 years ago and the opportunity for reunion with him in the Lord’s Supper helps us understand the meaning of Communion. Cranmer taught two positions simultaneously: that Christ is spiritually present in the Eucharist, and through faithful contemplation we are reunited with the whole Christ in heaven by the power of the Holy Spirit. Dr. Null writes, “The sacrament’s proper focus was not the transformation of the elements, but of the human will, by means of union with Christ through spirit-empowered faith.”
I don’t know how Buzz Aldrin understood Communion that day, but one way the Bible explains “being a Christian” is union with Christ (Jn 6:53 - unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you), and when we receive the sacrament there is reunion by the power of God’s life-changing Spirit in ways that strengthen our wills and reignite our affections towards God.
Ashley Null, “Thomas Cranmer’s Reputation Reconsidered” (Reformation Reputations: The Power of the Individual in English Reformation History, Ed. David J. Crankshaw and George W. C. Gross)