Here is the sermon I preached yesterday. While I seldom post sermons, this one is timely and also shares about me and my experience.
I walked on the Moon with Neil Armstrong
July 19, 2009 + Ephesians 2:13-22
An unusual fact that most people do not know about me is that I walked on the moon with Neil Armstrong on July 20, 1969! It is a funny story and I want to tell you about it.
Throughout the 1950s recruiters from California aircraft engineering companies would travel throughout the Midwestern United States looking for engineering types that wanted to live and work in California. There was a booming aircraft industry on the West Coast and they needed trained people. My dad had worked for General Motors on aircraft for years – he had received special training during the Second World War and with my sister in college in 1959 he cut a deal and we moved to California in 1960. After a brief sojourn in San Diego where dad worked for Convair, we moved to Los Angeles, near the international airport, which was the center of the Southern California aircraft industry. Dad went to work for North American Aviation.
Our family decided that it was better to live near work than to take one of those long Southern Californian commutes so we bought a little house near the airport. We were not alone in the journey we had taken. There were families from all over the US and world who had located to the area to work in the aircraft industry. The little community we were part of had sprung up after the Second World War like toadstools after a rain. And even the place names reflected the focus on flight. We lived on Kittyhawk Avenue. Other streets in the area were Airport Boulevard, Aviation and Interceptor Avenues. There were two Junior High Schools in the community – Orville Wright and Airport Junior High. I went to Airport. We were not assembled in classes but rather “flights.” The yearbook was called the Flightlog. You get the picture.
My mother went to work for Garrett AirResearch. My sister and brother-in law worked for North American. Dad got a better job at Hughes Aircraft.
When President John Kennedy in the early 1960s decided to put a man on the moon our family was right ready to do a part. It was the same industry that produced guided missiles, fighter aircraft, bombers and commercial aircraft that was called upon for the space program by NASA, so there was a strategic military angle to the whole program. And the US wanted to beat the Soviet Union. Our town was as focused on the Aero Space industry as the Quad Cities was focused on the farm implements industry.
When a space capsule went up no one seemed to talk about anything else, and we were always glued to the television. My adolescent mind grasped at certain tidbits about the program that you did not read about in the newspaper. There was a question about how to dispose of bodily waste in space and in the men’s room at North American Aviation there was a drum for employees to donate urine for space science. My brother-in-law told me he did his part. Garrett AirReseach had the contract for the “environmental systems” for the astronaughts, so she always listened with special care about how comfortable they were in the capsules.
With this background, in the summer of 1969 I had just graduated from Los Angeles State University and was spending eleven weeks in Europe. It was the era of five-dollars-a-day, and that was my budget, a shoestring. On July 19 and 20 I was in Germany, I think Munich. When I came back to the little student hotel where I was staying on that day the television was on in a little room off the lobby and a group on international students and young adults were watching and the sound was in American English – it was the same feed that we were getting to US television, I’m sure. I usually ignored the television since my German was very poor, but I stuck my head into the room and listened intently.
Someone said they were having difficulty understanding and asked me if I understood. I said “yes,” but added that I was not capable of translating into German. They said that was OK, but could I slow it down and explain some things to them. I was delighted to do so. I would listen to the jargon filled NASA speak and then summarize it in simpler English.
This went on for 20 or 30 minutes, but we were all getting restless because they were on the moon but not getting out of the capsule. I was really tired, and so was the group, so I excused myself and went up to go to bed. I traveled then as I do now with a little transistor radio, and I found the same feed on the FM dial on Voice of America in Europe. I wanted to hear the astronaughts exit the space capsule and actually set foot on the moon. I tried to stay awake, but fell asleep with the radio on. I was in that twilight sleep when Neil Armstrong narrated his journey down the ladder, and then took that step onto the moon’s surface with the famous statement, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” And the remarkable thing was that in my dream I was with Armstrong on the ladder and with him as he took that first step on the moon. I walked with Neil Armstrong on the moon!
And in a certain way I did. My thinking and that of my family could not have been more engaged in the space program than it was. The success was our success; the pride was deep and real. And I had been pleased that the international college students had also been fascinated with the American space program – they had been hanging on my words.
Several days and a few countries later I was in Geneva, the French speaking part of Switzerland. Like most students, I visited the United Nations campus there in Geneva, and went into the galleries to see what was happening. We were told that we were fortunate, that a smaller meeting was actually taking place, though not a general assembly. I put on the little shell like ear pieces with the simultaneous translation and a delegate from some country in Africa was speaking, and actually commenting on the moon landing of a few days before. He said, “When Armstrong made the statement ‘one giant leap for mankind’ he was not speaking for me.” The diplomat went on to explain that his country was so poor that spending money to go to the moon seemed frivolous. And that the privilege of the first world was so great that he and his countrymen had no identification with it. I was shocked! At first I thought that he was shortsighted and did not really get it. But as I have mulled this story for some 40 years now, I realize that he was coming from a different background and simply had a different set of assumptions and another point of view, conditioned by his experience.
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I am sure that there had been many opportunities for me to realize that a person’s background shapes their point of view prior to the moon landing, but something this dramatic has provided a touchstone for this reality ever since. Such a realization is one of the benefits of travel, particularly at a young age.
Here are a few other moments when I have had similar experiences:
a. Many focus around the public schools and teachers.
i. In my family home teachers were respected people and teaching was an honored profession. If I had a disagreement with a teacher, my parents were sure to take the teachers point of view first. My sister became a teacher and later a school psychologist.
ii. When I was living in Newark, New Jersey, working in a low income minority neighborhood as part of my internship with some Presbyterian churches, the local teachers’ union went on strike. I was shocked to realize that the minority parents and program administrators did not take the perspective of the teachers and the union. To them the teachers were elites who made more money than they did, lived out in the suburbs and commuted in to the heart of the city and did not care deeply about the kids. This was disturbing to me. It was a new way of thinking about teachers.
iii. When I lived in Chowchilla, California, a third of the congregation were teachers. Many married to farmers so that the farmers could have insurance and the family could have a steady paycheck. This too was a new concept to me. But support for teachers and education was pretty solid.
iv. When I served a church in San Mateo, California, with many members from the Silicon Valley computer companies these folk looked on teachers with distain. Teachers did not have that entrepreneurial spirit. The term “teacher” was synonymous with “slacker” in the minds of at least some of these high-tech and bio-medical types. Again, I was shocked. And of course, Nancy was working for the public schools.
But over the years I have come to see that one’s perspective on public education and public school teachers is shaped by one’s social location. While middle class folks like me hold teachers in high regard, both the poor and the rich hold them in some contempt and for different reasons.
I have come to realize that that people come from a different background and simply have a different set of assumptions and another point of view, conditioned by their experience.
b. On the day that Barack Obama was inaugurated President of the United States most people were pleased and hopeful. The African-American employees of the church and the Community Caring Conference where even more buoyant and hopeful. It depended on one’s life experience.
c. I think I have told this story before, and it is about the ethical scruples of Tongan Americans in contrast with Palangi – Americans.
Sampeni Finau, a Tongan Methodist Pastor, lost his wife Mary when she died from a heart attack. They had been married some 40 years. A few months later Sam married his church secretary who was some 30 years or so younger. We Palangi (white) pastors were shocked and dismayed because it is forbidden to hit on the secretary and especially one so young was considered inappropriate. The Tongans were very angry at Sam as well, but for different reasons. The did not care that it was the church secretary, and they did not care that she was so much younger. Their issue was that Sam had not respected Mary by observing the two years of mourning due her as a wife, and that he had married before the time period of mourning was complete.
CONCLUSION
Most of the time we are blind to the ways our life experience shapes our point of view. Our point of view is part of what we assume about the world. And assumptions are things we simply do not think about and take for granted. Those who are a little more self aware will sometimes see the ways their life experience shapes how they think, and this is probably a good thing.
In Ephesians there is a lot of consideration about how two cultural groups, Jews and Gentiles, can through Christ become one. Those who look at cultural diversity in the church, at how people of different economic and ethnic backgrounds can work together look to Ephesians. And this gives us the goal. That we may become one in Christ.
One of the strategic questions has been, do we become one by ignoring our differences? Or do we become one by acknowledging, sharing and even celebrating our differences? My experience is that we must acknowledge our differences. If we try to ignore them they blindside us.
Recently Nora, who coordinates the summer lunch program at the church, served a chicken salad product that she thought was simply delicious. It was not cheap! The kids turned their noses up at it. Angela, the church Outreach director, observed, lovingly with a smile, “kids in the hood don’t eat stuff like that.” Angela has become something of a menu consultant and things are working better. We had some chili dogs this week, and Nora said, “I thought they were gross. The kids loved them!” We did not get to this place by ignoring differences, but rather by acknowledging and acting upon difference.
Acknowledging and acting on differences born of background, social circumstance, race, education and money is hard work, but simply to think that all of this can be ignored is naïve and counterproductive. If we seek to achieve even in part the unity that is celebrated in Ephesians we will need to be more aware of our assumptions, and more accepting of the differences that others bring to our community.
Amen and amen.
