OUR MINDS AFIRE (20 OF 52)
Scripture: Luke 24:13-35
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Our Minds Afire (20 of 52)
Series: Lectionary, Year A
Christopher B. Harbin
Luke 24:13-35
Idioms are some of the hardest things to translate. What makes sense in one language does not always seem to communicate in another. Having studied more languages than I have fingers, I have found myself on more than one occasion at a loss for words, since a concept from one language simply has no equivalent in another. When we turn to idioms, however, we enter a more complex world of culture in which meaning attached to one thing does not convey the same ties in another. When we grapple with spiritual and theological meaning beyond the world of human experience, how can we hope to keep up? Language is inadequate. The idioms we rely on don't measure up.
John Wesley famously spoke of his heart being strangely warmed. We might be tempted to find that a close reflection of what the disciples journeying with Jesus to Emaus experienced. They spoke of their hearts burning while conversing with Jesus. Wesley referenced an emotional experience of God's saving and comforting presence. That is not at all what the two disciples experienced. The words they used may have been similar, but the meaning of the idiom would take us in a different direction.
The Hebrew notions of the heart, mind, brain, and emotions were very different from our own. The science of the day considered the brain as little more than a radiator to cool one's blood. The Egyptians had been discarding brains for centuries in their mummification processes as no more necessary than modern medicine has considered the appendix. Rather than understanding one's mind to be centered in cerebral activity, they considered the heart as the center of one's decisions, thought, and mental processes. The heart was not simply a pump for them. It was the center of all conscious action, reflection, and decision. They understood one's emotions as focused in the gut. That was the locus of butterflies in one's stomach, where ...
Series: Lectionary, Year A
Christopher B. Harbin
Luke 24:13-35
Idioms are some of the hardest things to translate. What makes sense in one language does not always seem to communicate in another. Having studied more languages than I have fingers, I have found myself on more than one occasion at a loss for words, since a concept from one language simply has no equivalent in another. When we turn to idioms, however, we enter a more complex world of culture in which meaning attached to one thing does not convey the same ties in another. When we grapple with spiritual and theological meaning beyond the world of human experience, how can we hope to keep up? Language is inadequate. The idioms we rely on don't measure up.
John Wesley famously spoke of his heart being strangely warmed. We might be tempted to find that a close reflection of what the disciples journeying with Jesus to Emaus experienced. They spoke of their hearts burning while conversing with Jesus. Wesley referenced an emotional experience of God's saving and comforting presence. That is not at all what the two disciples experienced. The words they used may have been similar, but the meaning of the idiom would take us in a different direction.
The Hebrew notions of the heart, mind, brain, and emotions were very different from our own. The science of the day considered the brain as little more than a radiator to cool one's blood. The Egyptians had been discarding brains for centuries in their mummification processes as no more necessary than modern medicine has considered the appendix. Rather than understanding one's mind to be centered in cerebral activity, they considered the heart as the center of one's decisions, thought, and mental processes. The heart was not simply a pump for them. It was the center of all conscious action, reflection, and decision. They understood one's emotions as focused in the gut. That was the locus of butterflies in one's stomach, where ...
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