This performance and commentary comes from Wyatt Witemeyer, a student who was part of a group that performed James and 1 Peter. We’re glad to be able to feature Wyatt’s thoughtful performance on Stories for the Sojourn.
Performance Notes:
This portion near the middle of the letter of James is often used for lessons on the specific topics in introduces: faith with works and taming the tongue. However, this powerful and exciting portion of James’s letter deeply connects to his main points and themes in his letter overall. By performing this section, I attempt to highlight James’s incredibly powerful analogies and logical arguments that connect back to his primary concern.
Double-mindedness
Throughout the letter of James, it appears that the audience as a community seems to be struggling with thinking and claiming one thing while acting in a seemingly contrary way. For instance, James warns his audience to be doers and not only hearers of the word (1:22), he warns them against being a friend of the world (4:4), and he warns them against doubting when they ask God for wisdom (1:6-8). In each scenario, James is trying to keep his audience from this “double-mindedness” where one part of the mind thinks and claims to follow God while the other part of the same mind shows evidence to the contrary, often instead following the world.
Faith and Works
This theme makes itself present throughout the section presented here as well. James uses some powerful analogies and effective repetition to drive home the point that faith without deeds is useless. James seems to be communicating that one part of the mind “claims to have faith” but the other important part, the deeds, is missing. However, both are completely necessary, and must work together, in order to achieve righteousness.
I attempt to highlight this feature of James by consistently using two distinct gestures for “faith” and “works” when performing the passage. Specifically, when the two are not together, my arms fall down to my side, becoming ineffective. Even in his analogy of telling a naked, hungry person to “keep warm and well fed” while “doing nothing,” I use the same gestures to emphasize that “in the same way” that doing nothing made the words of consolation useless in the analogy, not having works makes a person’s faith useless. However, when both faith and actions are working together, the faith is “made complete” and a person is made righteous as demonstrated by the two gestures coming together to form the same gesture I use for righteousness.
The theme of double-mindedness is perhaps even more obvious near the end of this passage as James mentions praise and cursing being spoken from the same mouth. Again, part of the mind is following God through praise, but the other part acts contrary by cursing humans made in God’s own likeness.
Attempting to highlight this point a bit more directly, I actually used the same gesture for “double-mindedness” as my fellow classmate that performed the first part of James 1. Both when talking directly about praise and cursing coming from the same mouth, and when talking through an analogy of salt and fresh water flowing from the same spring, I matched the gesture used by my fellow student to further emphasize the warning of James to keep from double-mindedness.
Obvious Answers to Rhetorical Questions
Alongside his powerful analogies that excellently display this theme, James also constructs several logical arguments through the rhetorical structure of his letter. This is made most obvious through his extensive use of rhetorical questions. In this way, James not only warns his audience against double-mindedness, but he also displays its ludicrousness through asking questions that have obvious answers.
I primarily attempt to feature this aspect of James’s letter through my tonal inflections when leading up to and asking the several different questions. Specifically, after saying that praise and cursing is coming from the same mouth, I give a pause after addressing “My brothers and sisters” to give a loud, short exhale and confused look as a way of displaying a sense of “this should be obvious” before stating “this should not be.” Some may even notice the very similar gesture to the one given at the beginning for the rhetorical question: “What good is it?” To further show how obvious and logical his point is, James enters his series of analogous questions regarding water flowing from springs and trees bearing fruit. I attempt to display these obvious correct answers through my tone as well. For example, I emphasize the fruits in the question: “Can a fig tree bear olives?” In the end, I did my best to display the strong language and powerful analogies James uses regarding his topic while still retaining his logical argument through great use of rhetorical questions.