We are a vast multitude at this Table today, visible and invisible, and we share a communion with one another. But there is also the moment when there is no one else—just you and the Lord whom you receive with the bread and wine, and your intimate, personal communion with him. “God so loved me” is the word as we take and eat this nourishment of eternal life.
Then we go out—not to revel in a private possession of this energy of love, but to reflect it wherever we go and whatever we may be doing, and to whomever we meet. One day last week I caught these words from the Pope and with them I close: “Keep Christ in your heart, and then you will see his reflection in everyone you meet.”
The Gospel in the Galaxies: What Message for Mars?
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