Flip the script

If you were to make a guess as to the one thing Jesus does more than anything else in the bible, what would you say? I’ll give you the top 5: Talks about money; centres those on the outside more than those on the inside; withdraws from crowds more than he joins them; hangs out with those called sinners more than with those who consider themselves righteous. And, the number one thing Jesus does more than anything else in the bible is this: he flips the script. 

The idiom “flipping the script” (not to be confused with “flipping the bird”) can be used in a number of contexts. At a sporting event, if your team is down 3-0 and in the second half they fight back to tie the game, we say they flipped the script. If you’re watching a movie by one of your favourite directors—Stephen Spielberg, Sophia Coppola, Ava DuVernay— and you’re expecting the plot to go one way, but then the film goes in a totally different direction, we would say that the director quite literally flipped the script. 

Flipping the script is also a major feature of hip hop music. Fear not, your priest is not about to drop a beat, but I will recommend an incredible collection of essays. It’s called We Still Here: Hip Hop North of the 49th Parallel. It’s about hip hop artists in Canada, from Sikh artists to black artists to Indigenous artists. And, the thread that runs through all of the essays is that of flipping the script: women lyricists showing that rap isn’t just for guys; male dancers showing that dance isn’t just for girls; Inuit throat singers alongside urban artists talking about their contribution to global hip hop culture. 

When we think about the stories Jesus tells in the gospels, almost all of them involve an element of flipping the script, of the story going where the original hearers might never have expected it to go. Think about the Good Samaritan. It’s not a friend or a family member, not even a first responder or a priest who stops to help the guy on the side of the road; it’s a Samaritan—someone who would have been an enemy of those listening to this story. Think about the woman caught in adultery, who is brought before Jesus. By law, she is to be stoned. The authorities are expecting Jesus to say something that goes against the law so they can arrest him. Instead, he says, the law’s the law, so I tell you what, whoever among you has never sinned, you can be the first to pick up a stone. 

Then, there’s our gospel reading from today, one of the greatest examples of Jesus flipping the script. It’s not the religious leader who is justified before God, it’s the customer service representative from the collections agency—the one who’s been harassing you for months, leaving nasty voicemails on your phone, putting threatening letters in the mail! It’s not the one who recognizes no need for God who is justified; it’s the one who recognizes every need for God. I have to admit, I kind of relate to the Pharisee on this one. The Pharisee has done everything right—fought the good fight, run a good race, as Lynda read for us today from the second letter to Timothy. I also wonder if the Pharisee is jealous of the tax collector? It’s a really difficult thing to accept dependence on God. I’m a whole lot better at depending on myself because at least then if things don’t work out I don’t have to deal with being disappointed in other people or disappointed in God. When I’ve only got myself to rely on, I’m a whole lot more in control.

It’s a very good thing to be able to depend on yourself, to trust your instincts and to know your own mind. I find the problem comes when you trust in yourself alone. Sometimes when life flips the script and things go in a totally different direction than what you might have been expecting, depending on yourself alone has its limits. When trying to survive those times when life throws us for a loop, it’s learning to depend on others as well as ourselves that makes all the difference. Learning to depend on God—that helps us imagine a future we might not be able to imagine on our own human strength.  

Now that’s faith. 

I don’t know what the story is for you, when in your life the script got flipped. Maybe it was a job you didn’t get? Maybe it was a relationship that didn’t work out? Maybe it was a plan for a family that didn’t happen? Here’s the good news: we can depend on God because God is there to be depended on. In the analogy of Jesus “flipping the script” we might at first see God as the one holding the pen writing the plot twist, the divine puppet master. Friends, I want to suggest that God isn’t the one holding the pen; God is the paper—with us on the page while our stories are being written. 

There’s an unbelievably beautiful line in one of the Eucharistic prayers that we say here at St Clement’s. It’s from a little book of supplementary prayers that the Anglican Church of Canada put out in 2001. Remember 2001? It goes like this: “Holy God, lover of creation, we give you thanks and praise, for in the ocean of your steadfast love you bear us and place the song of your Spirit in our hearts.”

Wow! What a beautiful prayer. In the ocean of your steadfast love you bear us. That’s what the tax collector is recognizing when he prays, “God have mercy on me, a sinner.” God, it is in the ocean of your steadfast love that I am held, no matter what.

You know, there’s something else that Jesus does a whole lot of that didn’t make our top 5 at the beginning of this sermon: finding lost things. Turns out Jesus is really good at that. He tells a parable about a woman turning over all the furniture in her house in search of a coin; he tells the story of a shepherd leaving 99 of his sheep in search of the one who’s gone missing; he talks of a loving parent who welcomes home a child who had completely lost their way. 

So, when you find that your script has been flipped and you’re in unfamiliar waters, know that you’re not just a drop lost in a vast unknowable expanse, you are a drop held and found in the ocean of God’s steadfast love. Amen.