One of the defining struggles of our time is the widening gap between those with wealth and power and the vast majority who live without either. These inequities reach far beyond access to comfort or convenience. They shape whose voices are heard, whose bodies are protected, whose stories are believed, and whose suffering is ignored. When power concentrates in the hands of a few, the many are not simply inconvenienced—they are rendered invisible.
We’ve seen this tension surface publicly through figures like Bobby Pulido and Bad Bunny. While both are successful, wealthy, and influential, and appeal to millions, they both discovered that popularity is celebrated only as long as it remains harmless to those in power.
Once they chose to use their platforms to speak on behalf of the marginalized—particularly people of color and immigrant communities who have been profiled, detained, and separated from their families—their voices suddenly became ‘problematic.’ What offends is not their fame, but their solidarity with people the administration has tried to convince us are the enemy.
This matters because the cost of these inequities is not theoretical. It is paid in fear, displacement, detention, and the daily erosion of dignity. Language and skin tone become grounds for suspicion. Entire communities learn that safety is conditional. When this happens, the issue is no longer politics—it is the value we place on human life.
And this is where faith can no longer remain neutral. If we truly believe that every person is loved by God, then equality is not an abstract idea—it is a responsibility. A responsibility that asks us to notice who is being silenced, to question who benefits from that silence, and to decide where we will stand when power and compassion are no longer aligned.
From God’s perspective, we are not ranked by wealth, influence, citizenship, language, gender, or skin tone. We are loved. And because we are loved, we are equal. That conviction is not sentimental—it is disruptive. Any system—political, economic, or cultural—that treats some lives as expendable directly contradicts that truth. And God’s love for all persons challenges every system that depends on hierarchy and every instinct we have to sort people by value.
It also raises a hard question: if this is who we are in God’s eyes, what responsibility does faith place on how we treat one another? That is the question the letter of James refuses to let go unanswered.
The letter of James was written to a community under pressure—socially, economically, and spiritually. These were early Christians trying to live out their faith in a world shaped by scarcity, hierarchy, and favoritism. Wealth meant protection. Poverty meant vulnerability. And even within the church, the surrounding culture’s values had begun to seep in.
James writes not as a detached theologian, but as a follower of Jesus who is deeply concerned that faith is being hollowed out from the inside. His letter is practical, urgent, and at times uncomfortable because he believes something vital is at stake. For James, belief in Jesus is not merely a matter of personal conviction—it is a way of life that must take visible shape in community.
Throughout his letter, James returns again and again to a single concern: faith that remains private, polite, or abstract is not yet alive. He sees a community tempted to confess the right things while quietly adopting the world’s assumptions about power, status, and worth. And James will not allow them—or us—to claim devotion to God while participating in systems that devalue those God loves.
Nowhere is this clearer than in James’s challenge to favoritism. He understands that partiality is not just a social failure—it is a theological one. To treat some people as more deserving of dignity than others is to forget who we are before God. James presses this point because he knows how easily communities of faith can mirror the inequalities around them while convincing themselves they are being faithful.
What good is it for one of you to say that you have faith if your actions do not prove it?
James 2:14-17
In this week’s scripture lesson, James begins by naming what often goes unspoken: favoritism is not a minor social flaw; it is a theological failure. When we sort people by appearance, wealth, or usefulness, James says we have made distinctions among ourselves and placed ourselves in the role of judge. In other words, partiality is not neutral—it is an act of authority we were never meant to claim.
In our companion book chapters for this week, Nadia Bolz-Weber pushes back hard against the idea that Christian responsibility is about moral superiority, correct opinions, or personal purity. Instead, she keeps returning to the stubborn, grace-soaked truth that belonging to Christ binds us to one another—especially to people we would rather keep at arm’s length. Responsibility, in this telling, is not first about doing better but about staying present.
In her stories, we see responsibility emerge in the form of showing up honestly, as she names how tempting it is to curate a spiritual life that keeps our mess hidden and our reputations intact. But grace disrupts that impulse. When we tell the truth about who we are—our addictions, our failures, our fears—we take responsibility not only for ourselves but for the community we inhabit. Honest confession becomes a gift to others, making room for shared humanity rather than silent judgment.
As she continues, she deepens this by confronting the myth of self-sufficiency. Here, responsibility is mutual. We are not just responsible for ourselves; we are responsible to one another. The church is not a gathering of the spiritually independent but a body where weakness, need, and dependence are unavoidable. Grace does not erase accountability—it redefines it. We are accountable for how our lives affect others, whether we intend that impact or not.
During this week’s final chapter, responsibility takes on its most concrete and uncomfortable form: love that costs something. We’re encouraged to refuse a version of faith that remains abstract, polite, or safely theoretical. If grace is real, it will shape how we treat bodies, stories, and lives in front of us. Responsibility shows up not in lofty beliefs but in ordinary acts of care, restraint, and solidarity—especially when doing so complicates our lives or challenges our assumptions.
Christian responsibility is less about being “right” and more about being bound. Bound to truth. Bound to one another. Bound to a grace that refuses to stay private or theoretical. Responsibility is what happens when grace moves from something we admire into something we practice.
Our letter from James names a hard truth: when we show partiality—when we decide who belongs, who matters, and who deserves our attention—we place ourselves in the role of judge. This isn’t just bad manners or poor hospitality; it’s a failure of responsibility. Grace binds us to real people, and James exposes favoritism as a refusal to live into that binding. To sort people by status, wealth, or usefulness is to deny the shared ground we stand on before God.
James does not leave us with a slogan or a theory. He leaves us with a mirror. If all are loved by God, then all are equal—and faith that truly believes this cannot remain passive in the face of inequality. Responsibility, as James understands it, is not about fixing everything or saving everyone. It is about refusing to participate in systems and habits that deny the dignity of those God loves.
The examples we see around us—public figures willing to risk popularity to speak on behalf of marginalized communities—remind us that responsibility always involves choice. Influence can be used to protect comfort, or it can be used to widen the circle of care. James invites us to make the same choice, whatever our level of power or privilege may be.
For the church, this means asking hard but necessary questions. Who feels safe here? Whose voices are missing? Where have we offered words instead of action, prayers instead of presence? These questions are not meant to shame us, but to wake us up to the life faith is meant to live.
Our text from James closes the distance between belief and action because he believes grace is alive. And living things move. They reach outward. They take responsibility for the world they inhabit. When faith is alive, love does not remain an idea—it becomes a practice.”
This week, let’s pay attention to who is being dismissed, ignored, or spoken about rather than listened to—at work, online, or in our community. And ask ourselves where comfort, familiarity, or fear might be shaping our responses to others more than love.
Then look for one way to move closer to the needs of others—through presence, advocacy, generosity, or listening. Let’s pray with honesty, not only for those who suffer, but for the courage to take responsibility where faith calls us to act.
Faith doesn’t come alive when we believe more—it comes alive when love takes responsibility to choose according to our beliefs.
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Pastor Tommy
Nadia Bolz-Weber. Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People. NY: Convergent Books, 2015. (ISBN 978-1-60142-755-7 ).