Steve Lindsley
2 Samuel 7: 1-14 (Selected Verses)
When I was fourteen years old, I thought for certain that I was going to get an electric guitar for Christmas. I mean, in my mind, it wasn’t a matter of “if,” it was “when” – and that “when” was going to be Christmas morning, lying under the Christmas tree next to a small modest amp. I’d been playing my Dad’s acoustic for a couple of years, and it was nice and all, but the music I was listening to and the albums stacked on my bedroom shelf were full of songs that had electric guitars in them. And I really wanted to play those songs.
And it wasn’t like my family hadn’t supported my musical journey up to that point. They had paid for three years of piano lessons, one year of guitar lessons. They supported and attended all of my theatrical endeavors at the school and local children’s theater. I wasn’t even asking for some top-of-the-line guitar – because, as any teenage boy knows, any electric guitar is an awesome electric guitar.
As December 25th grew closer, I started writing songs on my acoustic guitar imagining what they would sound like on electric. The planets were aligning perfectly, I could just feel it!
You see where this is going, don’t you?
Now I’ve got to give my fourteen-year-old self some props – I kept my cool, hid my disappointment behind smiles and “oh, just what I wanted!” as I unwrapped whatever it was I had gotten that was not an electric guitar. It was Christmas, after all, baby Jesus born to the world; and the last thing that baby wanted to hear was some bratty teenager complaining about a gift he didn’t get. Besides, I knew I had amazing parents; and while I wasn’t entirely sure of the reason for not getting my requested electric guitar, in hindsight I can probably guess a few reasons why. The good news is that, some 26 years later, I eventually did get that electric guitar on my own; the kind of thing you get to do when you hit your 40’s. Life is good.
But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t caught by surprise on that Christmas morning many years ago; this “no” that I had not seen coming.
So what do we do when a much-anticipated hope becomes a dashed dream? And I’m not talking here about the little “no’s.” No one gets everything they want in life. Many of the “no’s” we experience are not a big deal; we pick up and we move on. But what happens when a heartfelt, earnest request is not fulfilled? What do we do when the answer is no?
I get the sense that someone in our scripture reading knew what that was like. There he was, the great King David, the golden boy, everything seemingly going his way since he’d been a young lad, plucked from the fields and anointed king. There he was, celebrating; literally dancing in the streets, as the sacred Ark of the Covenant that held the Ten Commandments was ushered in to reside in its new home in Jerusalem.
And so it made all the sense in the world that David would decide to build God a brand new temple in Jerusalem. Here I am, David observes in a moment of clarity, comfortable in this luxurious house of cedar in which I live, but the Ark of God sits in a tent! Forty years wandering in the desert and another hundred carving out this Promised Land space. It was time to set up shop; to give God a house so all could come and worship God together. It made all the sense in the world – everyone thought so.
Everyone, that is, except the One whose opinion mattered most. God responds to David, speaking through the prophet Nathan: I don’t need a house. I’ve been living in nothing but a tent since we left Egypt all those years ago. And during that time I’ve never asked for a house, not once. Now there will come a time when a house will be built for me – in fact, it will be your son who will build it. But that time is not now. Not yet. So the answer is no.
We don’t get a sense from scripture as to how David responded to this unexpected “no,” do we? Did God seem to him like an ornery curmudgeon who’s happy as can be with his old-school flip phone and has no need for one of those shiny new smartphones, thank you very much? I cannot help but wonder if David was a little angry at this “no” – especially since his idea was such a good one, even an admirable and noble one. A house for the Lord! Why would that not be a “yes?”
No one, including the great King David, likes to be told no. But you take anyone’s life at any given moment, and you find that people are dealing with this all the time:
You’ve been with the company for over a decade. You’ve served as a faithful employee, doing all the things that need to be done, whether you liked doing them or not. You’ve done your time. All aiming for this promotion, one you’re next in line for, one you’ve earned, one that others in the office say you’ve earned. Instead, it goes to a younger colleague with half the experience and, one would assume, half the salary. But that’s just an assumption, because you really don’t know. You were never given a reason why. You were only told “no.”
Since your sophomore year in high school, it’s been the college of your dreams. It probably had something to do with both your parents going there and practically indoctrinating you since day one. Your first onesie bore the school logo and colors; your family attended homecoming every year. Some might say you only wanted to appease your parents, but a long time ago you acquired a love for this school that was all your own. But you’ll be loving it from afar next year. So many wonderful applicants, including you, the letter said. Apparently, not wonderful enough. It’ll be different colors you’ll be wearing in the fall – colors that, every time you look at them, will tell you over and over again that the answer was “no.”
You’d been praying beside the hospital bed every day for the past week. Your loved one had been lying there. And you had believed, really believed, that your prayers would be answered – even as the doctors told you it wasn’t looking good, even as friends and family gently advised you to prepare for the worst. But you were not at all prepared when the worst came. The hospital chaplain who’d been coming by all week came to see you a few hours after he died. Through tears you told him, I just don’t understand. I prayed and prayed. Why didn’t God save him? Why did the answer have to be “no?”
That last scenario actually happened many years ago, at a hospital where I served as a summer chaplain during seminary. It was I who’d been visiting the woman all week, listening to her fervent prayers and trying to console her in the waiting room. All these years later and I can still feel her grief over her husband’s death, as well as her confusion and hurt when the answer was “no.” And I’m honestly not sure which one of those two stung her more.
It is inevitable that we’re going to face some hard “no’s” in life – whether we’re the one receiving it, or whether it’s someone near and dear to us. And when we do, our tendency is to want to find a way to explain it, rationalize it, to put it in some kind of context that makes it make sense. Our heart’s in the right place when we do this. The problem is that the words that come out of our mouth when facing the “no’s” of life often do more harm than good.
You know what I’m talking about, right? Things we say like:
When God closes a door, God opens a window.
I’ve never really been sure what this is getting at, exactly. There’s always another way out?
Or:
No sense crying over spilled milk.
Okay…..?
How about:
Time will heal all wounds.
But what if it doesn’t?
And then there is:
Count your blessings.
Which is kind of the equivalent of, “Hey, look at this bright shiny object over here!” Comfort by distraction, I guess?
And lest we forget the classic:
God never gives us more than we can handle. Which, to be clear, is found nowhere in scripture.
If you’ve used any of these before when facing the “no’s” of your life, take heart: so have I.
What about this response – I am so sorry. That’s it – just four words. Not trying to rationalize anything. Not trying to make someone feel better with words of wisdom. Just being present with them in their disappointment, in their loss, in their “no.” A promise of presence.
See, I think that’s kind of the response David gets. No temple in his future. Bummer. But what is there for him? A “yes” of sorts. Not a window! Something different. A “yes” to David’s family, his lineage, his legacy. A promise of presence. A promise to be right there with him and his family even in the “no.” A gentle reminder that it’s not about fulfilling his hopes or his dreams or his agenda, but God’s. All of which made it clear to the golden boy king: it wasn’t about him. It never had been. That’s the thing. It had always been, and always would be, about God.
A few years ago my brother and I were talking on the phone about my parent’s upcoming 50th wedding anniversary. We wanted to go all-out with this celebration, and we came up with some pretty big ideas. A big party, renting out a place, catering food, my old band from Mount Airy coming to Raleigh to perform, maybe invite a hundred people or so. It would be at 50th wedding anniversary celebration to remember.
We called my parents and asked them to hold the weekend open because there was going to be a big party, a big celebration. There was a pause of skeptical silence on the other end of the line that was broken by my mothers’ voice: What kind of celebration, she asked. A big one, Mom, just trust us. I do trust you, she said calmly, but what kind of celebration?
So I told her, and over the course of the next few months that big celebration with a rented place and catered food and four-piece band and a hundred people became a small gathering for eighteen in my parent’s backyard, beverages courtesy of NoDa Brewing and OMB that I brought in a cooler, and food courtesy of, you guessed it, my mother. Because she wanted to make something. The boys provided an acoustic set of Fall Out Boy covers in the living room. It was not at all the party my brother and I had envisioned a year before. And it was absolutely marvelous. And looking back on it, the “yes” that came out of that “no” could not have been any better.
When the answer to some of our hardest and deepest questions and requests is “no,” it is almost as if another kind of “yes” germinates out of it. Something much deeper than a window. Something we rarely see in the moment. A “yes” to another career path, another school, another life trajectory without a loved one but with many other loved ones. And it’s not that the “no” doesn’t continue to sting, and it’s certainly not that everything always works out in the end. As much as we may wish otherwise, life is not a Hallmark Christmas movie.
What life is, if we let it, is a “yes” out of the “no’s” we face; and sometimes a “yes” to a stronger presence of God in our lives; a God who forever promises to be with us every step of the journey, whatever the answer may be.
Beloved, may we forever find faith in the “no’s” by listening for and receiving God’s “yes.”
In the name of the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, thanks be to God – and may all of God’s people say, AMEN!
* Because sermons are meant to be preached and are therefore prepared with the emphasis on verbal presentation, the written accounts occasionally stray from proper grammar and punctuation.