Last week I spoke about wisdom and that an aspect of having wisdom is the ability to imagine a world that is different from the world in which we currently live and move and have our being. I think a lot of what Jesus preached, taught and did were his attempts to help his followers imagine something different from the world in which they lived and moved and had their being. He did this because the Kingdom of God, God’s dream for the world, the primary message he came to deliver, is different from the kingdoms and dreams of the human created world, and therefore requires those who seek it to use their imaginations if they wish to join with God in creating the world of which God dreams.
But imagining is hard work. It is hard to move outside of the box of what we know through our everyday experience and life into a world of the unknown, a world that can seem impossible. For some it can seem fruitless to imagine such a world, a distraction from the harsh realities of the world we currently inhabit, which in this scenario we should just accept and deal with. It might leave us hopeless but at least we won’t be disappointed. For others imagining is seen as a childish pursuit and we would be better off figuring out how to work the systems that humans have created so we can get ahead as an individual rather than imagining how the systems could be changed. And for still others imagining is not needed because they are quite comfortable with the world as it is, thank you very much, never mind that the world as it is isn’t so great for a whole lot of other people.
But we are followers of Jesus and Jesus wants us to imagine a different world. In this liturgical year we have been travelling through the Gospel of Mark. We are currently in the ninth chapter and in the previous chapters Jesus has been very busy demonstrating exactly what God’s dream looks like. Through his actions and his words Jesus has been inviting his followers to imagine a world in which there is enough of what everyone needs to sustain a healthy life—enough health, enough food, enough community, enough power, enough acceptance, enough clothing, enough shelter, enough peace. And, in this dream of God, greatness comes through service, through taking care of those on the margins and those in need. Power is shared equally among everyone. Those who were currently on the outside are now on the inside because no one is on the outside of community.
But as I said before, imagining can be really hard. So, today we see his followers and their failure of imagination. Jesus has explained to them again that he will be killed, but three days later will rise again, and they are afraid. In their fear, their imaginations shut down and they revert to the ways and world that they know, a world in which some are ranked as better than others and are therefore on top while others are on the bottom. A world in which power is a scarce commodity so you better grab what you can before someone else does. And they argue about who amongst them is the greatest. We aren’t given the details of the conversation, but I imagine it sounded something like this:
“Hey John, did you know that Jesus confides in me a lot. I think I am his most trusted companion.”
“Peter you are full of it. He trusts me more than you. I am his closest advisor, not you John, and certainly not you Matthew, after all you are a tax collector.”
“I may have been a tax collector, but I am smarter than both of you combined. There is no way that Jesus trusts you two nitwits more than he trusts me. I know that I am the one he loves the most.”
And Jesus seeks once again to spark their imaginations, to get them to see a world beyond what they know, beyond the ideas of power and greatness that the world espouses, and he calls a little powerless child to him and says, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” In other words, “you want to be the greatest? Then give up power as you understand it now and take care of those who don’t have worldly power. This is God’s dream for the world. This is how it is in the kingdom of God.”
I think Jesus understood that we can’t seek what we can’t imagine. We can’t join in creating what we can’t see in our minds. In his teaching, preaching, healing, feeding, and exorcising Jesus is calling all of us to imagine what could be that we might be inspired to join in the work of making it happen. I think this is what we need to do as we seek to tackle the problem of climate change and all the various environmental disasters that we have created and now need to get ourselves out of. We need to imagine what the world will look like if we get it right, if we do deploy all the solutions and resources at our disposal. We have been given plenty of chance to imagine what will happen if we do nothing and this has terrified us and has led not to action but instead to paralysis. I think it is time to imagine what it will look like if we get it right.
So, let’s imagine this morning that the year is 2050 and we have gotten it right. It is a world in which all the solutions that were available in 2024 have been used and more have been invented along the way. 75% of us live in cities and these cities are much more densely populated, as personal cars, even personal electric cars, are much rarer as the taxes on them are quite high, as is the rent to house them, but it doesn’t much matter. For everything we need to live in these cities is in walking distance and with fewer cars on the roads there is more room for walking, bike riding, and electrified public transportation. There are plenty of ride sharing and car sharing services for when we need to go further afield in a vehicle. When we travel to other cities or rural areas, we simply take the electric train, which is cheaper and faster than most air travel now, as airfare reflects the true costs of jet fuel and jet travel, and jets have to fly slower in order to conserve fuel. The cities are very green. Every available surface is covered with plants and flowers. It cools down the cities and captures carbon. The air is moist and clean and it is much quieter. Very few children suffer from asthma and cancer rates have plummeted.
Suburbs are almost nonexistent, as it isn’t economically feasible to live in them, but those living in rural areas in the United States have grown from 17 to 25 percent. Most of this growth has been fueled by the growth of small farms and the resettlement of climate migrants who are providing much needed labor for these smaller, sustainable regenerative farms. As a result of the population growth in these rural areas, the rural economy is stronger. There are more schools, churches, health care facilities, and culture centers for those who live there. In both the cities and rural areas everyone is living in a more localized way. Food is grown locally. Families live closer together. People rarely commute long distances to work and therefore have more time to call their own. Repair shops are found in every neighborhood, for we only make what we can fix or recycle.
The average lifespan has gone up dramatically as respiratory diseases and cancer have decreased. Cardiovascular disease has also decreased because we are eating half the beef we consumed in 2024 and processed foods have become a luxury rather than a staple of our diet. Our changed diets and our increased walking have trimmed our waistline, and for the first time in decades our obesity rates are declining. Food is more expensive, so almost everyone has a garden of some sort. But there is greater food security throughout the world, because it is grown locally and local communities have more control over the production and distribution of the food. Energy, however, is much cheaper, basically free, as every available surface is covered in solar paint and solar panels and every windy spot has a wind turbine. And our buildings have been retrofitted to conserve every bit of energy we can.
Democracy is more robust because citizens have taken back their power and elected officials are more afraid of angry voters than the fossil fuel lobby and powerful corporations. As a result, our systems have become more equitable and we no longer ask first, “Will it make a profit?” but instead ask first, “Is it good for humanity?”
Entire industries, such as oil exploration, gas furnace manufacturing, and coal mining have died, but new green industries have risen up to take their place. For the developing world it has been the dawn of a new era, as they have leapfrogged over fossil fuels. They can now produce their energy locally and are not reliant on the larger and more powerful fossil fuel extracting countries for their energy. They now have energy that everyone can afford. They have lights in the night. They have created new businesses, and their children can study in the evening and go to school.
The earth as a whole is greener with 50% of it covered in forest, forest that is protected from human extraction in perpetuity. While there are still tensions between various countries, they are less than they had been because more resources (energy and food in particular) are controlled and created locally. The United States has built back a lot of international diplomatic trust because of the climate actions it has taken. Climate refugees are still a challenge and source of discord, but most countries are working together to resettle and aid the victims of climate change. Around the world damaged ecosystems are on the mend.
But all is not perfect. The world is still hotter than it has ever been because it will still take hundreds of years to reverse what was started. The long-lived greenhouse gases have nowhere to go other than the already overloaded atmosphere, so they are still causing increasingly extreme weather—though it is less extreme than it would have been had we continued to burn fossil fuels. Glaciers and Arctic ice are still melting, and the sea is still rising. Severe droughts and desertification are occurring in the eastern United States, the Mediterranean and parts of China. But we have gotten much better at predicting these events and the problems they will cause and heading them off before they become humanitarian crises. There are still many wretched things in the world caused by human created climate change, but they are not catastrophes. There is a much better understanding that we are all in this together.
Our children and grandchildren’s lives are different than ours were in 2024 in many ways, but they all agree that overall, that is not a bad thing. They are more connected to each other and their communities than we were. Their health is better. Their lives are comfortable, even if they don’t have as much stuff, and their homes are smaller. They understand that there are limits to what humans can do with this planet and that we only have one home. There is no other place to live if we destroy this one. They have many of the same joys and sorrows that we had in 2024, but they do not live with the fear of human extinction that hung over our heads back then and they are very grateful that we took the steps to make sure that their lives were secure and good in 2050. They are doing what they can to make sure that the lives of their children and grandchildren are as secure and good as theirs in 2075.
If you can dream it you can do it—Walt Disney
You have to dream, before your dreams can come true—A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, former president of India
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams—Eleanor Roosevelt
The person with big dreams is more powerful than the person with all the facts—Albert Einstein
Jesus unrolled the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and found the place where it was written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set free those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
…And he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Luke 4:17-19, 21
