The Ascension of the Lord
Lord of the Stars
Rev. James A. Wickersham

You know what? I’m going to do it again. I’m going to talk about UFOs at this Mass, or what we more often call now, UAPs.

In the last few weeks, there has been more public discussion about these sightings. The government has released more material, including pilot and military reports, and much remains unclear.

Around the same time, I came across a couple of purported news articles — and I say purported because we have to be careful about what we read — claiming that some Protestant pastors were warning their congregations that if intelligent life beyond Earth is discovered, Christian faith could collapse. I do not know whether those pastors were quoted fairly. Headlines are often written to provoke. We should not jump from unexplained to alien. We do not know what UAPs are.

But the question underneath those articles is worth examining. Why do so many people assume that if we discover intelligent life beyond Earth, it would prove God does not exist?

I call that the atheist assumption.

It is the assumption that as we learn more about the universe, we will finally discover that it is just cold and random, with no purpose within it, certainly no love sustaining it. And if there is advanced life elsewhere, then surely it will have graduated beyond God and religion.

But why would that be true? Why should our discovery of more of the universe mean there is less reason to believe in a Creator?

The Christian imagination does not assume the answer in advance. It wonders.

Perhaps God loves creating intelligent life extravagantly. God is not stingy in creation. Perhaps the universe is filled with beings capable of knowing, loving, and serving him. Perhaps if we ever travel farther into the stars, we would discover not a universe that has outgrown God, but a universe already alive with knowledge of him — perhaps even creatures who already know who the Lord Jesus is.

Or perhaps Earth is unique. Perhaps out of all the vastness of the universe, God placed intelligent embodied life only here. Could all this immensity have been created, in some mysterious way, for us? That would not show emptiness or waste. It would show that the God who made all this vastness still delights in the smallest details of his love for us. Either possibility gives us reason for awe. Neither gives us reason to abandon our faith.

And if intelligent life exists elsewhere, how might it relate to sin, grace, and salvation? I am only speculating. The Church has not defined this. But Christian faith is large enough to think ahead.

Perhaps some intelligent creatures never fell. C.S. Lewis imagined something like this in his book Out of the Silent Planet. Maybe humanity is the wounded race, the silent planet, the one marked by rebellion and sin while others know God without that rupture.

Or perhaps Christ’s saving work here reaches farther than we can imagine. Scripture says all things were created through Christ and for Christ, and that all things are reconciled through him. Perhaps his Incarnation, Cross, Resurrection, and Ascension on Earth have cosmic significance beyond what we can now understand.

Or perhaps the eternal Word has taken on their flesh as well.

Or perhaps humanity is meant to carry the Gospel outward, just as the first Christians went out after Pentecost. If Christ’s saving work here is singular, perhaps the Church’s missionary calling could be larger than we have ever imagined.

None of those possibilities checkmates God. None of them makes Christian faith collapse.

And even if we encountered an alien Roman Empire — intelligent life far more advanced than we are, convinced it had outgrown religion — that still would not disprove God. Rome once looked at the Christian faith as small, strange, and weak. Rome had power. The Church had the Cross of Christ. And the Cross went out through preaching, martyrdom, holiness, charity, and the sacraments, and it brought salvation to the Empire. So even then, the Christian question would not be, “Has the faith been disproven?” It would be, “How is Christ calling his Church to bear witness?”

And now we return to what the Church actually proclaims today. The Ascension is not simply about Christ going to the Father. It is also the beginning of the Church being sent. The apostles were sent to proclaim him in their day. We are sent to proclaim him in ours. And whatever frontiers await the Church in the future, she will still be sent to proclaim the same Lord. Jesus says, “You will be my witnesses.” The Lord who ascends into heaven sends his Church outward into creation.

Today, that Lord ascends into heaven in our flesh — not as a ghost, not leaving his humanity behind, but with the body born of the Virgin Mary, crucified on the Cross, and raised from the dead.

That is the mystery of the Ascension: Jesus Christ is Lord of heaven and earth, and all creation finds its glory and its destiny in him.