Living as My Best Self

Sermon for March 3, 2024
Series: Igniting Your Spirit to Find Heaven on Earth, part 3
Exodus 20:1-17

This morning, we’re continuing our Lenten sermon series about igniting your spirit to find heaven on earth, and we’re focusing today on this question: How do I live as my best self? 

If you Google “my best self,” you get a lot of hits about positive psychology, mindfulness, and self-compassion.  In fact, the top search result is a website called “My Best Self 101,” which offers a 20-item survey on “human flourishing,” as well as an 85-item survey to help you select the right tool to improve your well-being.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  “Human flourishing” sounds pretty appealing, and I’d be grateful to find just the right tool to improve my well-being.  (My hunch is that tool might be an exercise bike, but that’s a different sermon.) 

Nowhere on that list of search results will you find the 10 Commandments, our Old Testament reading this morning.  But, oddly enough, I’d say those 10 Commandments are all about human flourishing.  The question is where and how you see it happening.  “My Best Self 101,” like most of the rest of our culture, sees us flourishing from within.  That’s because our culture sees us as individuals, autonomous beings who bump up against each other sometimes but fundamentally find our purpose and meaning internally. 

But I think our spiritual tradition would say just the opposite.  That tradition begins with people living together, with God, in paradise, only to lose the best deal ever by thinking we could improve on it.  It’s the brokenness we all share – that right alongside the image and likeness of God lies our original sin, the idolatry of self-worship.

Healing that brokenness is the story of salvation.  Time and time again, God reaches out to beloved humans and invites us to look past ourselves to find our well-being.  And one of the most memorable times God did that is the moment we heard about this morning – the giving of the 10 Commandments.

Now, this isn’t exactly a warm and fuzzy moment.  The divine presence descends on Mount Sinai in cloud and smoke and fire, as trumpets and thunder herald a God who might well be coming to make war on wayward humans.  Moses brings the people to the foot of the mountain to “meet God” (Exodus 19:17); and the people are scared out of their minds.  Then they hear the laws, with Moses translating for the frightened crowd – a list of 10 restrictions, eight of them explicitly framed in negativity: “Thou shalt not….”

And yet … if you’re looking for a guide to help you live as your best self, I’d say these 10 Commandments are a great place to start, and here’s why:  This covenant with God invites us to turn away from seeing ourselves as the center of the universe.  Instead, counterintuitively, God shows us we can find our best selves not by looking deep within but by looking outward, not by maximizing our potential but by limiting ourselves for the sake of relationship.

How does that work?  Well, it might help to see what this original top-10 list actually has to say. 

To start out, notice that the 10 Commandments come in two blocks.  The first four are about our relationship with God, and the last six are about our relationship with our neighbors.  So, here are the first four, about relating to God.

Number 1:  “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me” (20:2).  Apparently, our starting place is to recognize which god is God.  We’re not worshiping golden calves anymore; our idols now do a better job of blending in – idols of power, wealth, beauty, success, freedom, progress….  None of these is inherently bad; in fact, all of them are gifts from God.  But they aren’t God, and we’ll be happier if we don’t substitute them for the One who is.

Continuing that thought, here’s Number 2:  “You shall not make for yourself an idol….  You shall not bow down to them or worship them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God….” (20:4-5)  I hear two things here: that God is so much more, so far beyond our experience, that any attempt to capture God physically will put transcendent divinity in a box of limited human imagination.  So, metaphors are great, but idols will make us think we’re wise enough to comprehend the incomprehensible.  And with that, worshiping that which isn’t God is an insult to the One who is, a slap in the face to the Creator who’s trying to bring us back into paradise.

Number 3:  “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God” (20:7).  Why not?  Again, it’s an insult.  For the Hebrews, the divine Name was so holy they couldn’t speak it.  They would only represent it with letters you couldn’t pronounce, what we transliterate as YHWH, and the “name” they used was instead a title, which we translate as “the Lord.”  It’s a recognition that God can’t be managed, can’t be reduced to human language.  And even more insulting is using that divine Name as spoken bold-face, demeaning what’s ultimately holy into crude interjections to give our fleeting feelings a little more pop.

And here’s the last of the commandments about our relationship with God, number 4:  “Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy” (20:8).  This one should make us stop short.  First, it’s one of only two that isn’t a “thou shalt not.”  Second, it’s the longest of the 10, going on for four verses in how to apply it.  Third, it applies to all people in the community, the people of Israel and everyone in their midst, even the animals.  Why does it get so much attention?  Because it’s the ultimate example of our Creator trying to help us while we childishly wriggle and squirm for the freedom to hurt ourselves.  It’s a huge act of love for God to say, “You don’t have to prove yourself all the time.  Instead, spend 14 percent of your life resting.”  Just looking at that selfishly, we’d be smart to take God up on the offer.  Plus, if a day of rest was good enough for the Creator, it’s probably right for the creations, too.  But even deeper than that, the sabbath is a commandment to live like God and to observe time like God, sanctifying it by reminding ourselves that time was God’s before God gave it to us.

So, those four commandments are the framework for a relationship with our heavenly Parent.  The other six are about relating to those heavenly siblings all around us.

Here’s commandment number 5:  “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land the Lord your God is giving you” (20:12).  Like the one about sabbath, this one’s telling us what to do rather than what not to do.  And the payoff is interesting.  There seems to be a link between honoring our elders and our own longevity.  This doesn’t compute in a world where the autonomous individual is king, but it makes great sense in a culture where being in community is the equivalent of being alive.  That might be a healthy perspective for us – that we live our best life when we build connections with, and learn from, those who’ve walked the path before.

Number 6:  “You shall not murder” (20:13) – which means, as Exodus later defines it, “willfully attack[ing] and kill[ing] another by treachery” (21:14).  Well, at least there’s one commandment I’m not breaking.  But it doesn’t take much theological reflection to apply it more broadly.  You shall not willfully attack and kill … another’s reputation, or livelihood, or way of life.  Even if someone has hurt us, even if we despise that person, that doesn’t give us the freedom to hurt that person without the community’s sanction.

Number 7:  “You shall not commit adultery” (20:14).  Again, this one’s pretty straightforward … until we start asking, “How far do you have to go before you go too far?”  What about building an intimate emotional bond with someone when your heart is already bound to someone else?  I think emotional adultery is a thing, too, because its damage to a relationship can be just as great.

Number 8:  “You shall not steal” (20:15) – another straightforward rule … or so it seems.  We probably haven’t knocked over any liquor stores recently.  But I knew a clergy person who stood in the pulpit and preached sermons off the internet without a single attribution.  That seems pretty clearly wrong – and not just because the act is dishonest, but because, once someone finds out – and someone always finds out – then your relationship with your people withers.  Well, then, so what about taking material from Wikipedia?  What about using A.I. to write a report?  If you’re deceiving people by making them think the work is yours, however you do it, that sounds like stealing to me.

And speaking of deceiving people, here’s number 9:  “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (20:16).  Originally, this was about legal testimony, but even in later biblical material, the rule is applied to slander more generally.¹  At the end of the day, in our relationships with people around us, all we have is our word.  Without the trust that represents, there is no community to share.

And finally, here’s number 10:  “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house … wife … slave … ox … donkey … or anything else” (20:17).  To me, this one always seemed a little unfair.  How can I keep myself from wanting something?  It may not be my most wholesome thought, but as long as I don’t act on it, don’t I get a pass?  Apparently, not.  First, covetousness hurts our own hearts by setting us up never to be satisfied with the blessings God gives us.  But it also damages our relationships with our neighbors.  Maybe I didn’t actually steal someone’s stuff; but if I want his stuff and can’t have it, I’m probably not working for his well-being.  And when we’re not invested in each other’s well-being, our community spirals downward.

Now, I’m sure there’s great advice on that best-self website.  But, as it seems to be with so much of our faith, I think what God has in mind is this paradoxical truth: that we live as our best selves when we limit ourselves for the sake of relationship – relationship with the God who loves us more than anything, and relationship with those wonderful, frustrating other humans with whom we share the world.  We need the 10 Commandments not as a list of rules but as the paradigm of interconnected well-being. 

So, how might we live God’s upside-down logic to be our best selves?  Maybe try this – two acts of Lenten self-limitation, one oriented to God and one oriented to the people around you.  Look at those first four commandments, and ask yourself, “What would help me remember that God is God, and I am not?”  Which commandment jumps out at you – maybe honoring God more regularly, or speaking God’s name only in reverence, or remembering to rest as a divine offering?  Then, look at those six commandments about our relationship with others, and ask yourself:  “How do I need to tie my well-being to their well-being?”  Which of those commandments jumps out at you – maybe calling your mom more often, or tempering your tongue about someone you don’t like, or asking whether you’re investing your heart with the person you covenanted to love forever?

Remembering the 10 Commandments is a good way to rediscover the upside-down truth of Gospel success:  We come out on top when God and neighbor rank ahead of us because our best self is a self in relationship.  Welcome to the crazy Good News of coming in third.

1.       See Leviticus 19:16. New International Study Bible, 116 (note).