(…continued) Ignorality is a word invented by author Michael Perry (1964- ; pictured above). After a few years in the big city, Michael moved back to his small home town in Wisconsin, where he joined the local volunteer fire department and ambulance crew. In his book “Population 485” he writes a little bit about the move from big city to small town, and quite a bit about his experiences as a first responder, and, his reflections upon those experiences. The subtitle of his book is “Meeting your Neighbors, One Siren at a Time.”
Michael Perry made up the word “Ignorality” to describe what he often sees on his emergency calls. And he said what oftentimes shocks him, is how surprised people are when something bad happens to them. He writes: “The calls blindside you, always. You prepare and prepare, but you are never fully prepared. We are never ready, and our patients are never ready. Over the years, I have developed an instinctive reaction to families and victims expressing surprise at tragedy. I wonder to myself: Why are we surprised? Why do we forget we are mortal? Bad, bad things happen everywhere, every day. Humans, for better or worse, have this feeling that we— individually— are special, and it won’t happen to us. But a patch of ice or a pea-sized blood clot makes a mockery of that illusion in a heartbeat. We are not special at all.” We all get our turn at something– serious illness, sudden death, or tragedy that can come in any one of a thousand ways—and one day will come to you. He goes on to say, “I get back from a call and the scene is still fresh in my mind, and I can’t sleep. So I lie awake pondering the inevitable nature of death, and I have to fight the desire to call my loved ones, wake them up and ask them, ‘Do you realize how thin the thread is? That maybe tomorrow we don’t wake up?’”
So Michael Perry invented that word ‘ignorality’ to describe what he so often sees. Ignorality, not in the dictionary, is a combination of two words that are in the dictionary: Ignorance and mortality, as in ‘ignorance of our mortality.’ In the dictionary, mortality is defined as ‘the condition of being subject to death;’ and ignorance is defined as ‘lacking knowledge or information as to a particular subject or fact, or, showing lack of knowledge.’ We are mortal, subject to death, and we all know that. But so many of us, so often, do SHOW a lack of this knowledge, by living each day with the illusion that it will not happen to us, not today anyway. This is totally irrational, and we do know better, but we live in this illusion of ignorality, this ‘ignorance of our mortality.’
Along with his leukemia, Oscar had ignorality. He was 92 years old, but by his surprise at getting sick, he displayed an astonishing ignorance of his mortality. And I’m not just picking on Oscar here, I would venture to say that we all, at one time or another, or even much of the time, have suffered under this illusion. Have you ever asked, “Why is this happening to me?” I know I have. I try to be less ignorant about this, especially as I get older, but it is an easy trap to fall into. Why me? Well, why not me? Look around. Everybody has something going on. A tornado rips through a town in central Kansas, and the reporter interviews someone in front of his destroyed house, and he says “I never thought that would happen to me.” But the man lives right in the middle of tornado alley. Why do we say that?
Now, of course, we can’t live in constant anxiety, worry, and dread about our impending doom. We don’t want to be paralyzed by fear and despair. That’s no way to live. But neither do we want to forget all about it, act like nothing will ever happen to us, and fail to prepare ourselves for whatever comes next. So for that, we turn to God’s Word.
In our Scripture readings for today there were three clear examples of ignorality. Listen again to the passage from Job 21:13-14: “They spend their years in prosperity, and go down to the grave in an instant. And yet, they had said to God, ‘Leave us alone! We have no desire to know your ways.’” Even in the face of death, there is an example of pure, willful ignorance, even defiance, toward the only One that can offer any hope. And then this example of ignorality from James chapter 4:13-15: “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make all kinds of money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’”
Finally, there is in the parable of Jesus from Luke chapter 12 another example of ignorality. It is the story of a man who built bigger barns, laid up plenty of grain for many years to come, and was all set for a long and comfortable retirement… I have to tell you, when I was preparing for this sermon the other day, looking close at this passage, something new occurred to me about this story. I thought: “Jesus might be hitting a little too close to home for me on this one. Did he imply something about a long and comfortable retirement? Actually, I haven’t built any big barns like the man in the story, but the retirement part is kind of like what I have in mind, too, and what I also have prepared for.” So this isn’t just a story about some guy 2,000 years ago. It could be a story about me, too. And maybe it’s also about some of you. So, I thought to myself, I better pay attention to the rest of what Jesus says here. And he says beginning with verse 20, “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ And this is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.” That is the problem—or at least one of the man’s problems. He was not rich toward God. He was entirely focused on the here and now, and was ignorant of the fact of his mortality, and, his desperate need for God. And then he died that night, and God called him a fool. I don’t want to be that kind of fool. (continued…)
Related Posts
