"This Fragile Earth"

All of us here today of a certain age can remember exactly where we were 40 years ago this weekend.

I was at the beach with my family. The house we were renting did not have a television, and I think I realized how important what was about to occur truly was when my father went out and rented one.

And so we were able to gather around that small black-and-white TV on July 20, 1969, 40 years ago tomorrow, and watch as men landed on the moon for the very first time.

In my memory, it was very late at night. In fact, the Eagle touched down on the moon’s surface at 4:17 p.m. It was at 10:56 p.m. that astronaut Neil Armstrong climbed down the Eagle’s ladder and first set foot on land that was not of the Earth.

For the next two hours and 21 minutes Armstrong and fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin explored the moon’s surface. And I am sure that we were not the only ones during those hours who went outside and looked up at the moon, marveling that the mythic man there had visitors that night from planet Earth.

Most of the moments in my life that I can remember as times when the world came together or stopped, transfixed by events of history, are difficult times. The assassination of a president, the death of a political leader or cultural icon, the bombing of cities or natural disasters.

But this was different. This was a time of rejoicing, a time of awe and wonder at something good.

Astronaut Michael Collins, who orbited the moon while his colleagues made history below, recalls traveling around the world after the return to Earth.

“People we met everywhere felt they had participated in the landing, too,” he said. “Instead of saying, ‘You Americans did it,’ everywhere people said, ‘We did it! We, humankind; we, the human race; we, people, did it!

“The inclusiveness of the experience was remarkable, especially given the space race’s origins in an atmosphere of fear and belligerence.”

The moon landing was, of course, a triumph of human intelligence and technology. It was a time, as the apostle Paul says, when we “prayed with the spirit, but with the mind, also.” When we “sang praise with the spirit, but with the mind, also.”

It was a time when we dramatically showed, as the hymn we sang this morning says, “We your children, in your likeness, share inventive powers with you.”

That moment of scientific and technological triumph was, indeed, for many people a very spiritual moment.

That’s what it was for an Episcopalian named Howard Galley, who marveled at the moon landing while he washed his clothes in a laundromat in Brooklyn. As his laundry spun through the washer and dryer, Galley picked up a pen and began to write.

I think you’ll recognize his words.

“God of all power, Ruler of the Universe, you are worthy of glory and praise. At your command all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.”

Yes, one of the by products of the Apollo space program is Eucharistic Prayer C, which I think is the most beautiful of all our Eucharistic prayers.

The Apollo program, which culminated in landing and walking on the moon, was just as much about this fragile Earth as it was about far flung corners of the universe.

John Noble Wilford, who covered NASA and the moon landing for The New York Times, wrote in a retrospective piece this week that “we went to the moon, but we ended up discovering Earth.”

That is the reason some historians believe that the most important of the Apollo missions was not Apollo 11, the first to land on the moon, but Apollo 8, the mission that seven months earlier first left Earth’s orbit and orbited the moon, 60 miles above its surface.

On their fourth lunar orbit, Commander Frank Borman looked over his shoulder and saw something that made him gasp in awe.

“Oh, my God!” he exclaimed, and his words were a prayer. “Look at that over there! Here’s the earth coming up. Wow, that is pretty!”

The astronauts gasped at the sight of Earth, a blue and white orb sparkling in the blackness of space.

The picture they took, Earthrise, is on the front of our bulletin this morning. We see it in black and white, the way we saw it then in those days when black and white ruled television and newspaper photographs.

But even in black and white, its impact was tremendous.

This was our first glimpse of our planet from beyond itself. We were all made tremendously aware that our Earth is indeed fragile, an island home in that vast expanse of interstellar space.

The photograph moved poet Archibald MacLeish to write in The New York Times on Christmas Day that year, “To see the Earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the Earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold – brothers who now know they are truly brothers.”

In his book Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth, writer Robert Poole contends that this picture was the spiritual beginning of the environmental movement.

“It is possible to see that Earthrise marked the tipping point, the moment when the sense of the space age flipped from what its means for space to what it means for Earth,” he says.

Late on Christmas Eve night in 1968, a year which had seen the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, riots in the streets of Chicago during the Democratic convention, and numerous protests against an unpopular war, the astronauts of Apollo 8 had a Christmas gift for the world.

On one of its final orbits around the moon, Borman announced to millions gathered around their TV sets, “The crew of Apollo 8 have a message that we would like to send you.”

While a camera focused on the Moon outside the spacecraft window, astronaut William Anders read the opening words of the creation story from the Book of Genesis.

“In the beginning, God created the heaven and earth,” he began. “And the Earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”

Then astronaut James Lovell took over. “And God called the light day and the darkness he called night.”

Borman closed the reading. “And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters he called Seas, and God saw that it was good.”

A hushed audience throughout the lands of Earth heard Borman sign off from the Moon: “And from the crew of Apollo 8 we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you – all of you on the Good Earth.”

Wilford writes that “This message, truly from on high, was like a gift of hope: There is still beauty to behold, still an aspiration to goodness and greatness.

“Those who believe in other gods, or no god at all, shared in the spirit of the moment, its solemnity and its evocation of wonder.

“And believers, if only in hope, experienced emotions of relief and an upwelling of op timism, where there had been despair.”

Amen.

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Readings

Genesis 1:1-19

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day. And God said, Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. The God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day. And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. God made the two great lights – the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night – and the stars. God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

1 Corinthians 14:4-16

For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unproductive. What should I do then? I will pray with the spirit, but I will pray with the mind also; I wil sing praise with the spirit, but I will sing praise with the mind also. Otherwise, if you say a blessing with the spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say the “Amen” to your thanksgiving, since the outsider does not know what you are saying?

Mark 6:30-34; 53-56

The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

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