There are a few instances in life in which one word can be mentioned, and the hearer can automatically remember where they were to watch it all unfold…usually in front of a television screen in the last half century, at least. Forty years ago, today, was one of those shocking moments that caught a nation and a world off-guard, and the video and corresponding images haven’t left our heart and mind memories since: Challenger. Just over a minute after take-off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, after NASA set off its next space exploration team, the space shuttle appeared to explode for numerous many to see (whether live or tape-delay), including children in schools around the country.
Unfortunately, one of the seven people on board was the first civilian to join astronauts in space, Christa McAuliffe. She served as a social studies teacher for a high school in New Hampshire, but she planned to take students across the nation on a field trip of a lifetime, by teaching lessons directly from the spacecraft to be simulcasted on classroom televisions. Unfortunately, McAuliffe and her six co-adventurers did not survive.
Schools would soon do their part to honor a fellow teacher, from planetariums to scholarships, including a school in California named McAuliffe Middle School, which displays a biography of the cherished classroom-leader on their website:
When the opportunity came to apply to be the first Teacher in Space, everyone who knew Christa told her to “Go for it!” She completed the eleven page application, mailed it at the last minute and hoped for the best. After becoming a finalist, Christa did not think she would be chosen. Some of the other teachers were doctors, authors, scholars…she was just an ordinary person. However, she was chosen, out of 11,500 applicants. An ordinary person - to whom ordinary people could relate - doing the extraordinary…
Grace Corrigan, Christa’s mother, said in her book A Journal for Christa, “Christa lived. She never just sat back and existed. Christa always accomplished everything that she was capable of accomplishing. She extended her own limitations. She cared about her fellow human beings. She did the ordinary, but she did it well and unfailingly.”
Many teachers and school administrators and parents of space-curious children from decades ago continue to insist that Christa is still teaching with her far-too-short 37 years of earthly living. It is a teaching that the church insists on as well: “ordinary persons…doing the extraordinary.” Granted, not everyone will end up as astronauts as many children still dream about 40 years after NASA hit a historic low in public perception. But everyone can still make an impact that will stick in the heart-and-mind memories for other siblings in Christ.
This upcoming weekend, we will celebrate the Presentation of Our Lord (Luke 2:22-40), when Jesus was presented to God for service, as was the custom for families to do with the firstborn son. In a way, the church proclaims that through baptismal waters, we are presented to God for such world-shaping service, to continue in the long-line of ordinary disciples doing extraordinary things because the Holy Spirit lives in us for such extraordinary memories to be made. And for the teachers, living and past, who will never allow us to believe anything less for ourselves, thanks be to God, indeed!
In Christ,
Pastor Brad
For the full biography from McAuliffe Middle School, please visit:
https://mcauliffe.losal.org/our-school/christa-mcauliffe-biography