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Editor’s Introduction

Over forty years have slipped by since David Read preached this sermon in the wake of the launching of Voyager II. The reference to Mars in the sermon’s title would seem to have been intended figuratively. In any event, the space craft, according to Wikipedia, is currently beyond the limit of the solar system. Long past Mars, it is flying at the speed of 19.4 kilometres per second.

Voyager II includes recorded information about our mathematics, chemistry, geology, and biology, as well as samples of our music. Nothing, however, is said about the faith convictions of the human family. This is what prompted Read to frame his own “Message for Mars.”

David Read doesn’t presume to speak here on anyone’s behalf but his own. Indeed, he encourages us to compose our own letter for Mars, or for anyone out there in space beyond our tiny family here on earth. What he offers in this sermon is simply one person’s attempt to communicate with anyone living beyond our planet in our unimaginably vast universe. And the message Read offers is unapologetically informed by “the one who fills the whole wide universe” with the presence and love of God.

The Gospel In The Galaxies: What Message For Mars?

A Sermon preached by David H. C. Read at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church on October 23, 1977

Text: “God has placed everything under the power of Christ and has set him up as head of everything for the Church. For the Church is his body, and in that body lives fully the one who fills the whole wide universe.” Ephesians 1:22, 23 (Phillips)

Readings: Psalm 139; Ephesians 1:15–23 (Phillips); John 1:1–9

“The whole wide universe.” Even as we worship here this morning in this corner of the city, a spacecraft is humming on its way to the planets and beyond. At the end of August “Voyager” was successfully launched—“a bottle cast into the cosmic ocean” someone said, because, for the first time, a message was sent to the galaxies to be read by any conceivable sentient, intelligent beings who might pick it up.

Such things are taken so casually nowadays that I don’t remember hearing a single comment on this unique event, far less a debate about what should be included in such a message. Perhaps most people feel that the odds are so long against the possibility of there being any astral civilization within our reach and of anyone finding and being able to interpret the message that the incident should be shrugged off as a romantic gesture designed to tickle the imagination. I may indeed be the only one to worry at all about what we are conveying to these hypothetical neighbors in outer space, but I confess that the contents of that capsule set off a train of thought which I want to share with you this morning in the light of our Christian convictions. I’m really asking what you feel is important to tell whoever is listening in the “whole wide universe” about our experience as temporary residents on spaceship Earth. Suppose the message is picked up and deciphered by some super-sophisticated being engaged in happy research in a civilization superior to ours—or perhaps caught up in some planet-shattering “Star Wars”—what would you like him to know about us, our aspirations, discoveries, hopes, and fears?

I checked again on the content of this capsule and confirmed my impression that there is a curiously missing factor. There is nothing whatever to indicate that human beings on this planet have any kind of religion, any belief in a God who is responsible for the existence of “the whole wide universe,” or conviction that we have a destiny that is located in another dimension than that which can be explored by the instruments of science. The capsule, I am told, contains information about our mathematics, chemistry, geology, and biology, but there is no mention of theology. Some magnificent music is included, but none, apparently, that relates to the great statements of our faith. It looks as if the American principle of separation of Church and State has now spawned a new one—the total separation of Church and Space. It may well be that the authorities who determined what this message should be were terrified to include something that might turn out to be too Catholic, too Jewish, too Presbyterian, too Episcopalian, or too Baptist for popular consumption, and so decided to eliminate religion altogether. But surely the end-result is to convey to these Martians (or whoever) a seriously truncated view of the deepest concerns of our human race. The major religions of the world are estimated to claim the adherence of more than two and a half billion human beings at the present time. Whatever the views of the composers of this message may be it seems hardly scientific to exclude all reference to the religious convictions that have to a large extent shaped the course of our history and still command the assent of the majority of the human race.

The actual message that is on its way is stimulating and thought-provoking. “We cast this message into the cosmos” it begins. Then comes a reference to the staggering dimensions of the universe. “Of the two hundred billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy,” we read, “some, perhaps, many—may have inhabited planets and space-faring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message.”

It is short enough to be quoted in full. Here is what we are going to tell any who may chance to pick it up. “This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so that we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe.”

This is a brief, comprehensive, and moving statement. Some might say that it does well to exclude any religious speculations and confine itself to simple, observable fact. But, of course, it doesn’t. In some ways these words are as much a statement of faith as the Apostles’ Creed. When I queried the omission of theology from the disciplines mentioned in the capsule some may have thought: “Well, that’s no loss: why bother these people with God-talk when we can stick to the objective sciences?” But this is no objective statement (even if there is such a thing—which is doubtful). There is a philosophy here—even a theology. Listen: “We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.” That is a new theological answer to the first question of the Catechism: “What is the chief end of man?” It is also a statement of secular eschatology, eschatology being the department of theology that deals with the ultimate destiny of us all. It is spelled out in greater detail than most theologians would care to risk. “We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations.” Is that really your great hope, the working hope of the bulk of human beings on our planet? I find this a fascinating, mind-stimulating speculation and have no inclination at all to rub it out in the name of my religion. But it in no way corresponds to the final hope that billions find in the Bible—the hope of the triumph of the Kingdom of God. And I am sure that our President, in whose name this message went, would be the first to declare that his ultimate hope lies elsewhere.

Hope is not a word from the lexicon of science. It is a theological virtue—one on which I intend to concentrate this year during the Sundays of Advent. I find this statement stimulating, and thought-provoking, but theologically defective. What it does do, however, is to force us to relate what we profess to believe as Christians to this dazzling picture of the universe presented by modern science, and our first attempts to voyage into its mysteries. We cannot shut ourselves into our sanctuaries and express our faith in the words and images of another era in human understanding of the universe, and then emerge into a space-age which seems to demand different ways of thinking and believing. In other words, there should be no wall of separation between Church and Space. I have said here more than once that the God revealed in the Bible is not one whose glory is in the least diminished by any discoveries about the vastness of the universe, and that the values for which Christ stands—love, truth, peace, humility, hope—are as valid for the first colonizers of the planets as they were for the Galileans who heard the Sermon on the Mount. But it would be wrong to pretend that there are no questions raised for an orthodox Christian by the new picture of the universe with which we are now living.

Most of these questions will relate to the figure of Jesus Christ himself. I once sat at a table with a very distinguished astro-physicist and a Christian evangelist, the late D. T. Niles. Niles was about to conduct a Christian mission at Edinburgh University and the other was in agreement that the students should have the opportunity to be confronted with the claims of the Gospel. Then he opened up his own doubts and reservations. “What I find hard to believe,” he said, “is that one who lived two thousand years ago in a little corner of this planet could possibly have the supreme importance you attach to him in this immense universe.” Niles thought for a moment and then said: “That’s a big question—but, first of all, you have to make up your own mind about Jesus Christ. Who is he?”

This is why I have set before you in apposition to the message to the planets this extraordinary statement of the apostle Paul. “God has placed everything under the power of Christ and has set him up as head of everything for the Church. For the Church is his body, and in that body lives fully the one who fills the whole wide universe.” If the apostle were to have lived on into our new understanding of “the whole wide universe” I don’t believe he would have altered one word of what he says here about Jesus Christ and his Church. It is commonly thought today that the first Christians were those who had actually met, or heard about Jesus and were so impressed that later they began to spin greater and greater myths about him until he ceased to be an historical character but became a kind of heavenly King. In fact, it was the living Christ, risen and ascended, who first awoke their faith, and it was only later that they began to collect the material about his earthly life. What they were saying was not that there was once a Jewish teacher whose life was so amazing, and whose death was so tragic, that he must be thought of as reigning somewhere in heaven but that they had been gripped by a living Lord in whom God himself had come to share their human adventures and rescue them from evil. They knew that they had been called into a company so closely united to this Lord that it could be called his body on earth. “For the Church is his body” as Paul reminded them, and then added the tremendous words: “and in that body lives fully the one who fills the whole wide universe.” The Gospel tells us of a man who lived our life, shared our sufferings, died our death, in one particular place on this tiny planet at one particular time (“under Pontius Pilate,” says the creed) and at the same time announces that he is the disclosure of the eternal God, the rescuer of the whole human family, and the final Lord of the entire universe. We have lived for about a hundred years with a vivid picture of the historical Jesus. Perhaps now the Bible is speaking to us again of this cosmic Christ.

Having said that, let me confess that I have trouble relating this cosmic Christ to the possible existence of other beings, other civilizations elsewhere in the “whole wide universe.” I have no answer to such questions as: “Did they also experience an incarnation? Was Jesus born more than once elsewhere? Did other races need to be redeemed? Or did God have some other way to communicate with them?” I feel no urge to deny that any such creatures ever existed in order to preserve my belief in the uniqueness of Christ. I am content to believe that the God revealed to me by Jesus is the Creator and Governor of the whole wide universe, and therefore have no hesitation in singing: “Crown him with many crowns, the Lamb upon his throne,” or praying with the apostle that I “may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that (I) may be filled with all the fullness of God.” That Jesus is the one who “fills the whole universe” I can joyfully affirm without having all my questions about how or when or where satisfactorily answered.

So let me now try to compose a little message for Mars (or anybody else who might be out there). I am not implying that this is what should have been enclosed in that capsule that was tossed into the cosmic ocean since I am speaking specifically as a Christian. But there are some things that I am sure millions of other faiths would also have liked expressed. I would want to add to some of the good things that were said and enclosed in that packet something like this:

Dear Martian, this scientific information, these records of music, these expressions of our hopes and aspirations are the product of a long story (as we count time), and in that story by far the most powerful influence has been the belief, held in every section of our planet from earliest times, that our lives—and everything that exists, including your planet—are not accidental happenings with no meaning but the result of the activity of a supreme Mind and Will that we call God. This God has been pictured in many ways and some of these pictures have led us badly astray. But over the centuries there has been a growing consensus that he is a Being who demands of us a life of honesty, kindness, peace, and love; and he promises us a destiny that will fulfill all the highest aspirations of our race. That destiny lies beyond this physical universe which we share. It is in another dimension altogether.

The most powerful religious impulse in our civilization is one that springs from a revelation of this God that we have now bound up in a book called the Bible. It tells us not only that God is the Creator of all that is, and that he made the human race to live in communion with him and to share a life of love and peace and joy, but frankly shows that something went wrong. At the heart of this revelation is the story of God’s rescuing action, what we call his “grace” offered to forgive what we have done wrong, and keep us on the right path. Roughly a billion of us recognize one called Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world, one who by living and dying for us has reconciled us to the living God. We believe that he is the true Lord of all of us and that as the perfect reflection of God he will reign over the whole universe. We believe that he is the one in whom all things will find their ultimate meaning and coherence. These beliefs have, in one way or another, been the driving-power behind the story of our civilization.

Dear Martian, you may know this already. You may have a far deeper knowledge of this God than we have. You may not have fallen into what we know as sin and therefore didn’t need to be redeemed. You may have a far closer communion with the Eternal than we have ever known. I just wanted you to know that billions of us would not express our hopes and aspirations entirely with the words: “We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations.” In the light of our faith we are less optimistic about “solving the problems” on our own, and, while it would be delightful to “join a community of galactic civilizations” most of us have a more immediate hope of reaching the eternal world, and a final hope of a glorious community called the Kingdom of God.”

If you don’t like that letter how about trying to write your own?