@tuttle Because they're both made of cheese and as we know, large pieces of cheese repells gravity and thus accelerates away from the Earth until it gets far enough away and the repulsive force dies of. Then they both hang there.

The variation in distance (so the moon can pass before the sun) is because someone has nibbled on the moon (you can see the bite marks on a clear night) and thus the moon has slightly less repulsive force and hangs just a tiny bit closer to the sun. This is what causes the ring around the eclipse.