Sermon Text: James 2:1-13
Date: August 31, 2025
Event: Proper 17, Year C
James 2:1-13 (EHV)
My brothers, have faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ without showing favoritism. 2For example, suppose a man enters your worship assembly wearing gold rings and fine clothing, and a poor man also enters wearing filthy clothing. 3If you look with favor on the man wearing fine clothing and say, “Sit here in this good place,” but you tell the poor man, “Stand over there” or “Sit down here at my feet,” 4have you not made a distinction among yourselves and become judges with evil opinions? 5Listen, my dear brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom, which he promised to those who love him? 6But you dishonored the poor man. Don’t the rich oppress you, and don’t they drag you into court? 7Aren’t they the ones who blaspheme the noble name that was pronounced over you? 8However, if you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. 9But if you show favoritism, you are committing a sin, since you are convicted by this law as transgressors.
10In fact, whoever keeps the whole law but stumbles in one point has become guilty of breaking all of it. 11For the one who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not commit murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery, but you do commit murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. 12So speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law of freedom. 13For there will be judgment without mercy on the one who has not shown mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
Show Selfless Love, Not Selfish Favoritism
This world is obsessed with getting ahead. Perhaps you’ve experienced a cut-throat environment at work where someone would throw you under the proverbial bus without a second thought if they figured it would get them the promotion. Maybe you’ve been tempted to or even have participated in that me-first culture at work, school, or even in your home.
But sometimes this obsession with getting ahead doesn’t result in cutting people down, but cozying up to the people who you think could benefit you. Perhaps you think of politicians who speak very negatively about their opponent in a primary but then make nice with them when it’s clear their former opponent might provide a path forward in their personal career goals.
This morning, our readings all focus us on favoritism and self-promotion. The heart of any amount of favoritism shown to others is going to be selfish gain. If I spend extra effort with you while ignoring this other person, it’s probably because I think closeness to you benefits me more than closeness to the other individual. And in the end, my selfish pride can lead me to think that I deserve whatever I can get from you and that you, and all people, are merely means to my end of getting what I want or think I deserve.
While all of our readings this morning focus on this general theme, this morning we’ll focus on our Second Reading from James. This letter was very likely written by Jesus’ half-brother, James, the son of Mary and Joseph. This James ended up being the leader of the very, very early Christian church in Jerusalem. We know that things were not easy for the Christians there in those early decades. In fact, poverty so gripped those believers that the apostle Paul would gather a special offering from the places where the gospel had been going out to take back and support the brothers and sisters back at the “mother church.”
While greed could always be a motivator, you can probably understand the temptation of the people James served to show significant favoritism toward the wealthy who came to worship with them. Someone who is poor might not be able to make up for the great deal of physical needs the church was experiencing. But one or two very wealthy and generous people could make a huge difference. So, it was tempting to roll out the red carpet for the wealthy, so to speak. And while they certainly would not have barred a poor person from coming or attending, they probably wouldn’t have had the royal welcome that the wealthy experienced.
But is that the point of the Christian life? Ought that to be the focus of the church? Undoubtedly, a certain amount of physical resources is necessary to meet our physical needs—food, clothing, and the like. But all of that is part of God’s promise to give us daily bread. As we heard Jesus a few weeks ago remind us, our heavenly Father knows we need these things, promises to provide them, and will give us all that he knows is good for us.
That is freeing because we can nip that part of us in the bud that thinks other people are a means to an end to achieve our goals—be they rescue from poverty or some other kind of upward momentum, physically or societally. Instead, we can look at all people not with favoritism, but with the selfless love that God has shown to us. We are not means to an end for God; we are the end. He shows his love to us because he loves us, not because he will gain something from us by doing so.
So the visitor to church wearing dirty, ripped clothing ought to have the same value to us as the person dressed immaculately. The members of the congregation who have a lot of physical resources to help support our collective work should have the same value to us as the people whose offerings amount to a widow’s mite given in thankfulness to God, but perhaps not funding massive programs or projects. We ought not show favoritism to anyone, but that doesn’t mean lowering the bar for how we treat one another. No, it means raising the bar as high as it can go.
Favoritism may seem relatively minor (perhaps because we might often do it without even realizing it). But James is quick to remind us what God’s standard is here. He doesn’t let us try to brush off favoritism as no big deal: If you show favoritism, you are committing a sin. James also reminds us that God doesn’t view his commands as individual items, some more important than others. No, God views his law as a unified whole; failure in one area is failure in all of it. Whoever keeps the whole law but stumbles in one point has become guilty of breaking all of it. For the one who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not commit murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery, but you do commit murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. For God, it is not commendable to say, “Well, I haven’t murdered anyone,” while at the same time cheating on your spouse or otherwise disregarding God’s commands about sex and marriage. He expects both to be kept; he expects it all to be done. Any sin is a problem not because of what part of the law it violates, but because it is a sin against God.
So if it feels like we’re picking nits as we sit here and discuss favortism or pride all the while knowing there are, humanly speaking, far worse things out there, that feeling is just our sinful nature trying to justify ourselves and bring the empty comfort of thinking that I’m at least better than that person over there who does “worse” things than me. Pride, then, is simply favoritism shown to oneself rather than to other people.
While we need to be careful about seeing Jesus as an example for us—he’s primarily our Savior, not our example—we can learn from him in this. Jesus was the one person who could have (and from our fallen human perspective, maybe even should have) been prideful. After all, he was the one who was perfect. He didn’t fail to keep God’s rules in any capacity, in stark contrast to everyone else around him—and everyone gathered here this morning. And yet, there was no vanity or pride in him at all.
Not only did Jesus not show pride, he didn’t show favoritism either. He spent time with the Samaritan and the Gentile just as he did with the Jewish person. Doing so would often cause some amount of conflict either with the crowds, the Jewish leaders, or even, at times, his own disicples.
Jesus did not look to exalt himself or see what he could benefit by being closely associated with this person but not that one. Jesus took all humanity as equals—equally loved and cared for. And he carried that humility and that love to the cross where he, in equal measure, paid for the sins of every single person in his suffering and death. Jesus allowed God, his Father, to exalt him in his resurrection. He didn’t need to do that himself; his Father had him covered.
Far beyond just being an example, here is the solution to those times when we haven’t acted in humility but have let pride, greed, or desire for self-promotion affect the way we think about ourselves or others. Because at the cross, Jesus paid for those sins, too (even if we are tempted to diminish their severity or even their reality). Jesus’ humility had purpose, was a means to an end. And, again, that end was you.
So you don’t need to exalt yourself by taking the prime seat at the table. You don’t need to exalt yourself by trying to link yourself closely to the upper echelon of society here at church, at your places of work, or in your communities. You don’t need to do anything to exalt yourself because God has already done far, far more than you could ever hope for. Your exaltation is not just a higher rung on the socio-economic ladder; your exaltation is not having more stories to share or names to drop. Your exaltation is that you are the redeemed child of God. You have been made wealthy with eternal treasure that will never go out of style, suffer from inflation, run out, or decay. Your sins are forgiven; eternal life is yours.
The freedom that this provides is indescribable. Knowing your Savior, knowing your position in his kingdom—in his family—frees you up to show love as he showed love. You don’t ignore the poor or the wealthy person, but you love them both in a way that seeks to reflect God's universal love for all people. When interacting with people, your primary question is not, “What can they do for me?” but, “What can I do for them?” and is especially centered on sharing our Savior with them.
Your humble Savior loved you and saved you. May we, empowered by his love, also humbly love everyone else now and through eternity! Amen.
