I let my subscription to Harper’s lapse for a year before they made be an offer that I couldn’t refuse. Though I often referred to Harper’s in this blog overall the writing frustrated me muchly.
Reading the 1963 book Peking and Moscow I know why. Modern writers, and commentators by the way, write and think like Chinese not Westerners. “Lilly Abegg, who spent most of her life in the Orient, emphasizes that Chinese writing ‘influences thought in an antigrammatical, that is to say, and antilogical and antidiscursive sense’, whilst Occidental languages led to discursive thought proceeding consecutively from one idea to the next.” In addition Occidentals engage in “sound-writing” finding meaning in the words. Orientals engage in character-writing and so find meaning in form and pictures, and many meanings in each picture (25).
Modern Jews are considered to be both Occidental and Oriental depending on where they are from. But Old Testament Hebrew, while “picture-like” in its appearance, held no meaning in the the form or the picture. It was in the words. I would say the current way of commentating popular in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod is more Oriental than Occidental and that is scary.
Speaking of scary ever hear of the “Sunday Scaries”? I hadn’t, but I knew as a clergyman what it meant to be scared of Sundays. I don’t think laymen fully appreciate what Paul is saying when he says in 1 Cor. 2:3, “And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.” He is drop-dead serious and absolutely literal.
How many Sundays did I have to fight to stay in the pulpit or in Bible class! How many times did trembling engulf me! From my first days in the ministry I would have to read Ezekiel 2, on the toilet by the way, to find the courage to get out there and “get-er-done.” I am not alone in this. I am not an exception. A pastor told me how his chest hurt so bad, he was in his 30’s, every Sunday he thought he would keel over. Another pastor, also in his 30s too, told me: “I have every illness known to man that can be induced by stress.”
What was usually worst of all, for me, were weddings and funerals. There is no one in the sacristy with you. The presence of others is helpful. If you wish more insight on this see a 2006 Christmas sermon of mine Incarnated not Disguised, 12/25/06.
But the maelstroms of ministry was not what Harper’s was referencing. In their Harper’s Index which is the very epitome of factoids (To their credit they give a date and source for all of them), I read this: “Percentage of Americans who report experiencing the ‘Sunday scaries’: 45.”
Before I tell you what that is – I know you’ve already Googled it (Though I don’t use Yahoo or Bing, I’m going to start using these as verbs just in the spirit of fair play.) – let me tell you that at first I thought this another example of the speed of social media. Harper’s hadn’t seen any need to define this social media term that is probably already an SS in SMS language (Yeah, I had to Bing that.), and there are probably uber emojis and GIFs on it as well.
As you know by now, having Yahooed Sunday scaries, Wikipedia says: “Sunday scaries, also known as the Sunday syndrome, Sunday blues, or Sunday evening feeling, refer to the anticipatory anxiety and dread that commonly occur on Sundays for employees as the weekend ends, and the workweek resumes on Monday.[1][2] The sinking feeling of malaise may begin Sunday morning before peaking in the evening.[3][4]”
I was thinking: “Here is another example of how modern tech is going to give us a common vocabulary, and therefore common way of thinking, so much more rapidly than radio or TV did or could.” Then in reading the best book on the Kennedy assassination, the only book, probably with the exception of The Warren Report, that needs to be read on the subject, I find that news of his assassination went round the world in a flash. Of course Telstar had debuted in 1962. But I remember reading D’Aubigne’s History of the Great Reformation in Germany and Switzerland where he documents how in the 16th century the idea of democracy spread faster than any means of transportation or communication then available and that D’Abuigne had no explanation for how that could be.
Of course being out of the pulpit for almost two years now, I no longer have the Sunday scaries which for me use to start on Fridays but by the end were only a shroud over Saturdays. Instead of Sunday scaries, I have Carly Simon’s “Anticipation.” I can’t believe what a joy, privilege, relief it is to sit at the feet of a faithful pastor proclaiming Law and Gospel. But I know what’s on his side of the pulpit, and I pray for him before, during, and after the Divine Service. You should do the same for your pastor, and if you’re a pastor know that the Sunday scaries, as far as I know, haven’t killed anyone. Only made them long for death which is not a bad thing for a Christian who sings, “I long to be in heaven in that untroubled sphere…”
