Who Am I?

The old man walks into the empty room slowly.  He is dressed in the simple dark peasant uniform of Maoist China during the Cultural Revolution. Looking at his face, the years have clearly weighed on him; he has known his share of disappointment, of suffering.

Yet he is far from worn down, and his eyes are bright as he takes in every detail. The room is magnificent, as you would expect from the imperial throne room in China’s Forbidden City. He approaches the throne itself, which commands the room from a high platform with steps leading up to it.

He looks one way, then the other, and seeing no one, he steps over the rope surrounding the platform.  He only gets up a few steps, though, when a voice rings out: “Stop!  What are you doing?” He turns around to see a young boy of about five years old staring accusingly at him with the gravitas of a sergeant-at-arms. The man responds kindly but respectfully to the boy, whose family apparently lives on the grounds as caretakers of the museum.

“I used to live here, too,” the man says. He gestures up to the throne: “That is where I sat.”  The boy is taken aback. He peers more closely at the man. “Who are you?”  he asks, puzzled. The man smiles softly at the boy for a moment, and then responds: “I was the emperor of China,” he says simply.

It would be an almost unbelievable revelation if you hadn’t just spent more than three hours leading up to this scene watching the old man’s life story in the extraordinary film, The Last Emperor. The film is sweeping epic that tells the life story of Puyi, the last emperor of China before the revolutions.

He grew up in the ultra-traditional confines of the imperial court in the Forbidden City, sealed off from the people with servants to answer his every whim. As he comes of age, though, his circumstances change radically. He is driven out of the Forbidden City to make his way alone in the world.

He spends much of the rest of his life on a journey trying to find a new identity and purpose, to find an answer that most basic of questions: “Who am I?” He tries many answers, going from being a Western-style playboy, to the puppet ruler of Manchuria during the Japanese occupation, to years enduring the harsh life of a political prisoner, until he is finally declared rehabilitated and is released.

He returns to Beijing, finds a modest apartment to live in and takes a job as a gardener in the city botanical gardens. And it is in this life, finally, that he finally achieves a measure of peace and contentment, grateful now simply to have a life to call his own and a purpose that is, in some small way, productive.

When that child asks him the question, who are you?, he finally has an answer that tells the whole story, albeit elliptically: “I was the emperor of China,” he answers, with everything that implies. I was, but am no longer. It is part of his history, but no longer his identity. Now he is simply Mr. Puyi, the gardener.

It is a truly remarkable story, but it is not a unique one. Several thousand years before Puyi, perhaps another young boy met an old shepherd at an oasis in the Sinai desert. He sits in the shade of a scraggly tree near the well.

The years have clearly weighed on him, but his body is still strong and his eyes are still sharp. His skin is leathery from decades of caring for his flocks in the blazing sun. His beard would be white if not for the perpetual sand and dust matted in it. His gaze roves over his sheep as they mill about; he counts them instinctively, even unconsciously, while alert to any signs of weakness, sickness, or soreness.

Perhaps the boy strikes up a conversation with him, and the old shepherd reveals that he used to live in the capital of Egypt.  The boy is taken aback; that would be quite unusual for a Midianite shepherd. “Who are you?” the boy asks, peering more closely at the man.  And perhaps, in a moment of candor and personal reflection, the old shepherd smiles softly at the boy for a moment, and then responds: “I was the Prince of Egypt.”

It would be an almost unbelievable revelation if you only picked up Moses’ story where our passage begins this week, with Moses the shepherd taking his flocks from his home in Midian down into the Sinai.

But you probably know the famous story of Moses being drawn out of the river in a basket by Pharaoh’s daughter and adopted as her child. As a result, he grows up living a life of extraordinary privilege in the confines of the Egyptian court, sequestered from the rest of the world.

As a young man, though, his circumstances change radically. He goes out to see his people, the Hebrews, and ends up killing an Egyptian that is beating a Hebrew. He is forced to leave the imperial court and try to make his own way in the world. He begins a journey that takes him into the Sinai desert; he comes to an oasis and ends up defending a group of women being harassed by local shepherds. 

They are so grateful that they bring him home to meet their father. The father gives one of his daughters to Moses in marriage and gives him a job in the family business, which is sheep-herding.  

And as Moses settles into this new life, we can assume that he achieves a measure of peace and contentment, grateful now simply to have a life to call his own and a purpose that is, in some small way, productive.  He was the Prince of Egypt, but is no longer.

Now he is essentially a working-class family man. He buys a modest home. He has two sons. And the decades go by in the way they do for so many people, with the basic responsibilities of work and family blurring the years together, though punctuated by births and deaths, setbacks and successes. Moses was the Prince of Egypt, but no longer; this is who he is. He is just Mr. Moses the shepherd.

So when Moses was leading his flocks through the Sinai to Mount Horeb, it is just an ordinary day in what has been his ordinary life for decades on end. He was no more expecting to encounter the blazing manifestation of God’s glory than you and I would picking up a coffee and a Sizzli at Wawa on the way to work.

Furthermore, once he does encounter it, he doesn’t appear to have any idea what he’s looking at, other than something extremely unusual. Moses, ironically, does not seem to be a particularly religious guy; we have no indication that, in his first 80 years, he ever talked to God or even about God. So God essentially has to shoot off fireworks to get his attention. It’s only after Moses turns aside to see the bush that God begins to speak.

After God’s self-introduction, Moses understands who he is talking to: the God of the Hebrew people throughout the generations. But he doesn’t know why. So God answers the question that Moses must have been thinking but hasn’t asked: what are you doing here?

And as God talks, you can see Moses nodding along like you do with someone who’s telling you a story but you’re not sure why, or where they’re going with it. “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt.” Okay… “I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians.” Great; good luck with that!  “And to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” That sounds wonderful.

“So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”  Okay… wait, what was that? Me? I thought you said you have come down to do all that!  Who am I to go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?

Moses thinks he knows the answer to that question. He was the Prince of Egypt, but now he’s an 80 year-old shepherd living in exile from both his native people and his adopted home. He’s a fugitive from justice, a man wanted for murder.

He’s someone who not only has no friends amongst the Israelites, he’s never even lived in that culture. And even if he went, he protests later, he has a speech impediment that will hardly make him convincing, either to Pharaoh or the Israelites themselves. He is clearly not the right person for this job. 

God answers his question; a bit indirectly, to be sure, but it is an answer all the same. “Who am I?” asks Moses. “I will be with you,” God replies. In other words, God says, you are the one I have chosen to work with and to work through; you are the one that I am sending; you are the one that I will be with. That is who you are.

And because I am with you, you will be able to do what I am asking you to do. As it turns out, God is able to use the very things that make Moses such an unlikely choice on paper as opportunities to further God’s gracious purpose.

Because he was the Prince of Egypt, because he was a fugitive, because he is a simple desert shepherd, Moses is much more equipped to lead God’s people than he realized. He knows Egypt; knows the court, knows the culture, knows the language.

He knows how to recognize injustice and oppression and to stand up to it forcefully, even if his first response was an inappropriate overreaction that sent him fleeing into the desert. He knows the desert; knows how to walk through it safely and avoid its dangers and traps.

And as an 80 year-old shepherd, he knows how to keep a flock together, counting them instinctively, even subconsciously, as he watches for any signs of weakness, sickness, or soreness. God knows, far better than Moses, exactly who Moses is; and more importantly, God know who Moses can and will be.

It is no less true for us. Oh, few of us have literally heard God call out our name aloud, and even fewer have been enticed into God’s presence by a burning bush! But God does call each of us by name. God does confront each of us up close and personally, in the midst of the supreme ordinariness of our lives, and declare us to be standing on, of all things, holy ground, ground set apart by God for a sacred purpose: to be a conduit for God’s liberating grace in the world.

As we all know, our lives are not holy ground in and of themselves: all of us are carrying some version of brokenness and weakness, failures and fears, conflicted pasts and uncertain futures. And God does not wave a wand and make those things disappear; they remain a part of us.

Yet our lives are holy, holy because God declares them to be; holy because God makes them holy through God’s intimate presence with us, up close and personal; holy because God finds ways to use everything about us, everything we have been and everything we are.  God uses the things we think disqualify us from serving God to magnify God’s grace working through us.  With God, nothing is wasted.

Who am I?, we may protest to God along with Moses but God has an answer, the only answer that matters: I will be with you.  Everything else is part of your history, but it is not your identity; your identity is that you are who I am with. 

But who are you?, we may ask God along with Moses, and God answers again.  “I AM WHO I AM,” God replies. And that is the good news in all its power and its mystery. 

For that is God’s identity, revealed most fully in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because God is who God is, constant in love and justice, mercy and peace, God accepts and uses who we have been and who we are, even as God transforms us into whom God intends us to be.  All that is left is to say: “Here I am.”