Exodus 3:1-15
Romans 12:9-21
                                                              
We attribute lots of characteristics to God; love, peace, hope, joy, power, knowledge, Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer.  We learn about God through God's revelation or self-disclosure.  While we may claim we want to know God and may do many things hoping to encounter or discover God, always it is God who is initiating the relationship.  God desires and wants to know us and wants to be known.  What a surprise!  A God who really wants to relate to us.  And therein is one of the most overlooked characteristics of God, surprise. 
           
Woven into the biblical material are the encounters of many people with God.  Common to those encounters is the element of surprise.  The person encountering God is taken by surprise.  And the surprise is multi-dimensional.  There is surprise that God is present, surprise at what God does, and surprise at what God expects.  Truly one response to God is surprise, surprise, surprise.
           
Have you ever been moving along in your life when it seemed that out of nowhere came an event, a circumstance, a situation that sent your thinking in another direction, and the eventual result was that you lived your life differently?  This has happened to a lot of people, but perhaps in no more dramatic fashion than happened to Moses.
           
Remember what had happened to Moses prior to where we pick up the story in our text for today from Exodus 3.  You’ve seen the statement on church signs and other places that “Moses was a basket case.” 
           
Moses was born during a time of upheaval in Egypt.  Pharaoh had become suspicious of the Israelites and his intelligence director seized the opportunity to suggest that given the opportunity the Israelites would attempt a coup.  The solution: kill all male children under two years of age.  That would destroy their leadership for a generation.  A mistake in this line of thinking was not considering women as leaders. 

Moses survived this massacre of children because of the leadership of five women. Five women made significant contributions to the early, formative life of Moses.  As far as the biblical material suggests, Moses never knew or met Shiphrah and Puah, but they made a lasting contribution to his life.  Actually, they saved his life.  Their attitude and approach made it possible for Moses to survive childbirth.  Had they not been courageous enough to tell old Pharaoh, "No," there would have been no Moses.  Midwifery is no easy task even when everything goes well.  Can you imagine what the task would be like if you were being told to do just the opposite of what you had been trained to do.  Here were two women whose calling in life was to help women give birth to children.  And they were being ordered to destroy half of the lives they were supposed to help birth.   

There was Moses' sister who watched out for him from a distance.  She scouted out the best possible route for him.  She sought the welfare of Moses by watching from a distance to make sure the opportunity was there for Moses to get a chance to grow.  I need people like that in my life.  I need people who may not be directly involved in my life in the up close and personal sense but who are there looking out for my well being, intervening at just the right time to help keep me on track.  I've had some teachers to do that for me and some colleagues.  Some of you have done that for me with your prayers for me and with comments and words of encouragement you have offered at a most helpful time for me. 

Then, there was the work of Moses' mother.  She did everything she could to protect Moses long enough for him to get a start in life.  All of us need people like that in our lives.  We need people who will stand beside us and protect us from things that would destroy us.  If they can just stand beside us long enough to allow us to get our feet on the ground, then, we can get our lives going.  We need that as we get started in life, we need that when we enter each phase and stage of life, we need that when we move to a new place, we need that when some tragedy happens in our lives; we need that when for whatever reasons we feel especially vulnerable to be hurt or destroyed; we need that when our lives have been shaken and we need some time and space to regain our equilibrium.  Then, of course, Moses' mother was able to nourish and nurture him during the first couple of years of his life.  All of us are in need of people who will help nurture and nourish us.  Some of those people may be able to stay with us for a lifetime.  More often different people fill the role and need for us at different times in our lives.  One of the amazing things about Moses' mother is her ability to discern when she was not going to be able to continue in her nurturing and nourishing role and could then turn him over to the princess and in essence turn loose of him and trust him to another.  There is no way of knowing how easy or difficult that was for Moses' mother, but it is to her credit that she was able to do that at all.  All of us need people who will nurture and nourish us but not try to control us, who will recognize when and how they can contribute to our growth and when they need to let us go.  In one way it is like helping a child learn to ride a bicycle.  It is never easy to know exactly when to take off the training wheels.  It is never completely clear as you run along side the bicycle to know when to keep holding on and when to turn loose.  Amazingly, Moses' mother was able to do that.  Maybe to some extent she had no choice and that made it easier for her to turn loose.  In any case, she wanted to do want was best for the welfare of Moses.  Given the setting and circumstances, she knew it was best for Moses that she let go and she did.  A lot of parents are doing a similar thing.  They are sending their children off to nursery school, elementary school, middle or high school.  Others are sending their children off to college.  Parents have to turn loose of their children and entrust them to the care of others. 
           
Although we know almost nothing about the princess, the fact she adopted Moses and he was reared as an Egyptian is evidence that she also looked out for his welfare.  It is fair to assume that the princess made sure that the very best of everything was available for Moses.  Although at times when I read Moses' story I am overwhelmed at what he was able to accomplish, I think now that I should not be so amazed or surprised.  If all of us had five women, five men, just five people working in our behalf as advocates for us to see that we were nurtured, nourished, pointed, and guided in the way we need to go, my, my, what a difference that would make!  
          
Although Moses had several people working on his behalf and looking out for his best interest, he made a serious mistake.  One day he let his anger control him and he killed an Egyptian and he ran for his life.  Moses was a fugitive from Egypt.  This part of the story is picked up in the text in Exodus that was read earlier.  Moses fled to Midian.  Apparently the Midianites had no extradition agreements with Egypt and so this murderer was free to come and go as his pleased in Midian.  After being there awhile he met Zipporah, and eventually they were married.  He needed a steady job and so his father-in-law hired him on as a shepherd to look after his flocks.  The turmoil he had felt over his relatives being slaves in Egypt subsided some.  The anxiety he felt over having killed a man and then having run for his life also calmed.  His life became settled and routine. 
           
One day while he was leading his father-in-law's flock in the area of Sinai, he saw an unusual thing.  It looked to him like a bush was on fire but the fire wasn't destroying it.  He moved closer to get a better look and examine what was happening.
           
Was Moses ever surprised?  Guess who showed up as he got closer to this "burning" bush?  God.  Somehow the settled-ness of Moses, the calming of his anxiety, the routine of daily work, and the free thinking and associating that his mind was able to do combined and he discovered he was in the presence of God.  Now, he had been in the presence of God all this time but he was unaware.  The combination of his routine, settled existence and seeing this unusual shrub ignited awareness in Moses.  It made Moses want to take off his shoes because to encounter God was a holy experience.  As I read this story I get the impression that Moses had no idea God was anywhere around even though he believed God was always present.  Often it is when we relax that God has the best chance of communicating with us.  Moses was surprised that God was present.
           
But that wasn't nearly as surprising as what God wanted and expected of Moses.  God wanted Moses to go to Egypt.  "Egypt!" Moses exclaimed.  "I've just spent forty years trying to get over having been to Egypt.  I'm a nobody.  Besides, there's a price on my head and if I go to Egypt the Pharaoh will turn me into a nothing.  If it's all the same to you, God, I'd rather stay a nobody than to become a nothing."
           
And God responded, "Well, it's not all the same to me.  I want you to go and I'll be with you.  When you lead the people out of slavery to freedom bring them to this mountain and worship me here."  Surprise, surprise, surprise!
           
But Moses said, "When I tell them the God of their ancestors sent me, they're going to want to know your name.  So what do I tell them?  Do you have a calling card?  Who do I tell not only sent me but wants them to follow me out of Egypt?" 
           
Once again God surprised Moses with an unexpected response.  "Tell them my name is I Am.  Yea, tell them I Am sent you." 
           
If you think all of this is surprising, Moses actually did it.  Maybe it all seemed so wild and crazy that Moses decided to take a shot at it.  Maybe it seemed so wild and crazy that Moses thought only some god named I Am could possibly suggest it.  I don't know if this was the first time Moses was surprised by God but I can tell you it wasn't the last.  Read the book of Exodus and you can summarize it this way, "Surprise, surprise, surprise."
           
What happened to Moses has been repeated more times than anybody can count.  The Bible has numerous examples including Joseph, David, Ruth, and numerous people who encountered Jesus and whose stories are recorded in the Gospels.  
           
Jesus' audiences were made up of tax collectors, sinners, Pharisees, teachers of the Law, and disciples.  The tax collectors and outcasts were surprised because they had never heard of anybody who would accept a person with no questions asked, no obligations, no strings attached.  And the religious leaders were surprised because if such a story got out people wouldn't need them to interpret all the rules and regulations.  And people wouldn't have to pay for all the mistakes they had made.
           
Happy is the person who is not offended that no one receives what he deserves but vastly more.  Happy is the one who enjoys the surprise.  The ones who don't enjoy it are the ones who are blind to surprise because they are too trapped by their own dead seriousness. 
           
People expect anything and are prepared for everything except for the fact that beyond the darkness of their blindness there is a great light.  They are prepared to go on plowing the same old field.  They are prepared for a God who strikes bargains, but not for a God who gives as much as for an hour's work as for a day's work.  They are prepared for everything except to be surprised by God's generous, unbounded love and grace.  They don't like such surprises because surprises cause them to be out of control.   
           
Is it possible that it is only when we hear the Gospel as a wild and marvelous surprise that we really hear it at all?  Heard as anything else, the Gospel is the church's thing, the teacher's thing, the preacher's thing.  Heard as a marvelous surprise--high and unbidden and ringing with laughter--it can only be God's thing.  Surprise, surprise, surprise!      
           
Given the history of God's activity with people, there should be no surprise about what God might do in and through someone's life.  How often has what you expected to see limited what you were able to see?  Have you ever looked straight at someone and then said to that person, "Oh, I didn't see you standing there."  Why not?  You did not expect to see that person. 
          
Is all of this surprise activity an effort by God to confuse us and trick us?  By no means!  The reason for the surprise is much more our doing than anything God does.  Because we feel more comfortable and secure in a controlled environment, we like to draw some boundaries around God and say that God must function only within these predetermined arrangements.  What happens is that we miss a lot of what God does because God refuses to color within the lines, certainly within the lines we draw.  I sense that God enjoys the surprise as much as any of us. 
           
Think of many of the surprising ways God has acted and worked down through history.  Who would have dreamed that a monk in Germany would become concerned about some of the ways the church was functioning?  He listed some things he wanted to discuss and debate.  Although no one showed up to debate him at the designated time, the debate went on within people's lives and eventually between Martin Luther and church leaders.  Out of that the course of church history was altered drastically.  Surprise, surprise, surprise! 
           
Who would have dreamed that the racial patterns of an entire nation would be influenced by a black woman who sat down on a Montgomery bus and refused to move?  She was just tired from a hard day’s work and she wanted to get home to her family like everybody else.  Surprise, surprise, surprise!
           
Peace groups in the churches in Europe gathered each Monday for weeks to pray for peace and reconciliation.  Who would have ever believed that the Berlin wall would come crumbling down?  Surprise! 
           
One of our problems is that much of the time we are looking for God in all the wrong places.  If you want to discover God, encounter God, go where people are being surprised.  Behind the surprise will be God offering grace, love, and hope to the most unlikely people we can imagine, and expecting some unbelievable things from people like telling the government and the corporations to let God's people go, like telling people to stop war and do justice, to work for the equality of everyone. 
           
God's involvement in the world, God's involvement in our lives is just one surprise after another.  We are surprised when we experience God's presence.  We are surprised by what God does.  We are surprised by what God expects of us.  We worship a God who surprises.  Even when we anticipate being surprised by God, the surprise is even more intense than we expected.  Our reaction to God is nothing but surprise, surprise, surprise! Surely God’s other name is Surprise!