Download Everyday a new Christmas

Every day could be a new Christmas somewhere (published in Church Times,
2012, and updated)
It is about time we got properly acquainted with cosmic Jesus. Leave it much longer and the almost
certain reality of extra-terrestrial life will leave our theology, our preaching and our credibility in the
dark ages.
Planet hunting has become a serious business. So far more than 2,325 planets have been found
outside of our solar system, mostly very big ones, but only because they are easier to spot. The
European HARPS project looks for the small wiggle of a star as a planet obits it. The NASA Keplar
project looks for a drop in the light from a star as a planet passes in front of it. The PLANET (Probing
Lensing Anomalous NETwork) project relies on the earth being exactly in line with two stars. Earth is
at one end of the line and the nearer star’s gravity bends the light from the farther star like a lens. If
there is a planet close to the lensing star then that anomaly can be measured and the planet size and
position estimated.
Daniel Kuba, one of the authors of a recent article about PLANET in the journal Nature (11th January),
concludes that there are “.. literally billions of planets with masses similar to Earth orbiting stars in the
Milky Way”. Combine that with results from the NASA Keplar study where 4.4% of its candidate
planets are in the Goldilocks zone and you have mind-boggling potential for life. Goldilocks, you may
remember, liked her porridge not too cold and not too hot. So the Goldilocks zone is the distance
from each star where water is water, and is neither ice nor steam. If a planet of about the right size is
lucky enough to be there, with water and an atmosphere, then life can happen.
The evidence is mounting. In many such planets, evolution must be an event waiting to happen, or,
most likely, is already happening. Although the probability of that first self replicating molecule is
incredibly small, given the enormity of a planet and the vast number of possible initial evolutionary
events over hundreds of millions of years - life on the earth-like planets is pretty much
guaranteed. Earth, for example, measured on a cosmic timescale, began to evolve life almost as
soon as life was physically possible.
And that’s just our galaxy. Best estimates are of more than 100 billion galaxies, each one containing
maybe a billion life supporting planets. How many such planets in the universe? Potentially 1 with 20
zeros after it.
Creation cannot be human-o-centric. We cannot be alone, though we can only imagine the nature of
life elsewhere.
And what of Jesus of Nazareth, is the world his limit? Yes it is – at least in the sense of an
incarnation here. It is theological sophistry to talk of the Jerusalem cross saving some random other
advanced species the other side of the universe when no one there knows nor can ever know about
it. It is the knowing what God has done for us, here, that makes it so wonderful. A loving God
keeping it a secret from the rest of the universe is not an option.
So, without being regarded as a crackpot, please, or someone who has read too many Iain M Banks
Culture novels or watched too much Star Trek, can I predict some silicon based, hairy-hoofed
tetrapod with inbuilt radio communication and a single honeycomb of eyes to be Jesus, albeit with a
different name, bursting, right now, into the poverty and religious bigotry of some other planet becoming as one of them. Jesus brings God and them - whatever they are - together for the much
the same reasons as God incarnate here.
And why only once on each planet? Planets live for billions of years, time enough, maybe, for a
sequence of evolutions on each, for dinosaurs to be followed by humans and then...?
And, of course, the universe is not static. NASA estimates seven new stars (with planets) in our
galaxy every year, that’s about 22,000 every second, across the universe. Many will support life,
evolving beings in the image of God and with that freedom and opportunity for failure, I guess every
such world needs the Jesus intervention. This all implies a new incarnation happening somewhere
maybe many times every day over much of the last 10+ billion years. It means that God in Jesus is
continually giving himself/herself/itself to recover swathes of lost creation. Every day is probably a
new Christmas somewhere.
Like many I know, you may choose not to bother with such theo-boggling, but some will be ‘Star
Gazing Live’ with Professor Brian Cox, or following the debate between Dr Rowan Williams and
Professor Richard Dawkings. If you, like me, nurture a faith underpinned by reason, we need a
church that answers the atheists not only in the dusty corridors of universities, but is fearless of
advertising the reality of God continually creating, loving and living locally in planets across the
universe. This is the most astounding rational truth of all.
So let it sink into your thinking. It means the transcendent God is, even more, beyond anything we
can imagine. We each walk with a Jesus who is being born again into other societies on other
planets; Jesus whose cross is yesterday, today and tomorrow somewhere; whose body was broken
before our world began and whose body will be broken after humanity is gone. For once let the
theology be ahead of the evidence. Let the science be what it is - the continuing discovery of God’s
amazing design and absolutely never a threat to faith.
Revd Prof Adrian Low
Emeritus Professor of Computing Education
Staffordshire University