"Berrying" Jesus

Here is a grammatical quandary for you:

Why is "buried" or "bury" so often pronounced as "berried" or "berry"? This is a very irregular pronunciation of the English "u". It would be odd to say, "I like Sehbway sandwiches," or, "The good, the bad, and the 'ehgly'".

Similarly spelled English words follow the normal pronunciation of "u", such as "hurry" (which, at least in colloquial speech, actually sounds a little more like "er" as in "her"). I'd even accept "uh" as in "up" or "oo" as in "rude". But this "eh" pronunciation is just a little unnatural.

This comes to mind every Sunday as we recite the Apostles' Creed, and I hear 80-some voices say, "He was crucified, died, and was 'berried'", as if somehow Jesus was made berry-like after death, or trounced by a horde of berries (just like a mob "mobs" somebody).

If there is a grammatical guru out there with an explanation, I'm all ears!



UPDATE:

Dr. Rhoda Cairns, English professor at Briercrest, kindly set me straight:

I'm not a phonetics expert by any means, but the OED gives the pronunciation of "bury" thus: /ˈbɛrɪ/. According to one elaborate phonetic chart I found, the symbol for the "u" is pronounced as a short "e," as in "eh" and "head." If the symbol were flipped horizontally, then the pronunciation *would* be the "er" sound, as in "urge" and "heard." So it is perfectly correct to "berry" Jesus, as far as I can ascertain. There is an obsolete English noun,"bury," that comes from the Old English word "burh"; the OED definition is "manor house or large farm." So you could "bury" ("berry") Jesus on a "bury."