The first half of James chapter 2 is a tough one. I suspect we all use “heuristics” – or rules of thumb – to work out our view of other people. We look at people’s clothes and appearance and work out class or intelligence or job or affluence or likability.

If we work a room at a party, we want to talk to people we think are going to be interesting, naturally going up to people who are already looking like they’re having fun. The person who’s all alone might be boring – so many will avoid them.

We sometimes hear about the “power snob”, someone who will only give their time to the already important and is constantly looking over their shoulder to get to speak to someone grander.

But God is counter-cultural on this. In the Gospels, Jesus speaks to the people who are leapers, literally and metaphorically.

Both Old and New Testaments urge us to avoid such snobbery. In James 2, we read (NIV):

My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favouritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, ‘Here’s a good seat for you,’ but say to the poor man, ‘You stand there’ or ‘Sit on the floor by my feet,’ have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? But you have dishonoured the poor.

This section of James’s letter is an echo of Leviticus 19, where God tells Moses in verse 15: “Do not show partiality to the poor or favouritism to the great”. Then, in verse 18, Moses is told in those famous words: “love your neighbour as yourself”.

In the movie The Jesus Revolution, a small church that becomes the centre of a major revival in California struggles when someone in the traditional congregation resents unwashed hippies with backgrounds in drug addiction joining in.

But James urges us to lean in and show God’s love towards those who don’t seem to fit in. It’s why many churches do work with those who are homeless, suffering from additions or otherwise struggling in life.