Friday, November 6, 2009

Was it Schadenfreude?

I was listening to Pastor Wil Weedon during Part 3 of the five-part series on the Nicene Creed on Issues, Etc. (October 7). In Pastor Weedon’s Weedonish way he was jumping back and forth from one language to another. First Greek, then Latin, then German and back to Greek again. After all of that came Hebrew too! All flawlessly pronounced and inflected. I wish I could do that! And then, IT HAPPENED! He mispronounced a word! A weak spot in the Weedon armor. He wandered a little too far off the path and related the Latin carnis resurrectio (the resurrection of the flesh) to the Spanish word “con,” as in “chili con carne” (chili with meat). But he pronounced the “o” in con with an “ah” sound instead of a long “o” – a grave mispronunciation of the Spanish. Was it schadenfreude? Was I secretly happy that Pastor Weedon had mispronounced a word. Nah, not really. If I was secretly happy about it I wouldn’t be telling you about it now would I. I’m publically happy about it because there’s a word somewhere in the wide wide world that I can pronounce that Pastor Weedon can’t. So yeah, I guess it is a case of schadenfreude!

Seriously, I’m thankful that we’ve got Pastors like Pastor Weedon who are willing to teach us the tougher stuff, and I’m thankful for Issues, Etc., which continually supplies us with quality teachers. I live vicariously through Pastor Weedon as he quotes Scripture and theologians in their native tongues. And I share in his joy as he revels in bringing to us the history of the Church and through it the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I just hope he stays away from the Spanish!

The series on The Nicene Creed was excellent, so good in fact that I'll have another [slightly] more serious post or two in the future inspired by it. The first episode was on October 5. Go to the archive page on the Issues, Etc. website and scroll down to find it.

Pastor Weedon's blog, unusually titled Weedon's Blog, can be found here.

The graphic comes from http://www.wordle.net/.