“Thanksgiving Sunday Sermon Manuscript for November 23”

Philippians 4:4–9

From Joy to Thanksgiving!

1. It is Thanksgiving. In the church year, today is called “Reign of Christ Sunday,” or “Christ the King.” It is the last Sunday of the liturgical calendar, the Sunday on which we proclaim that Jesus Christ is King of kings.

2. This year, this Reign of Christ Sunday is being observed together with “Thanksgiving Sunday.” In fact, in the Korean church, Thanksgiving Sunday is kept as an important feast day, but most American churches do not observe a special Thanksgiving Sunday. Because Thanksgiving itself was unfamiliar in Korea, missionaries began to keep Thanksgiving Sunday within the church to convey its meaning well, and that tradition has now come to be observed by us who are living here in the United States.

3. The fact that this is the last Sunday of the church year means that, in the church’s time, today is the last day, and from next week we enter a new day, the season of Advent. If we think about the church calendar as beginning with waiting for Jesus, then the time that we experience inside the church feels like welcoming a new time with reverence and holiness.

4. As we look toward the last day and the new day, we are offering this year as “Thanksgiving to God.” And I paused to think: in this time, what kind of confession of faith can we offer?

5. Looking back over this year, the church has always been busy, and it seems that you have all done your very best as well. But if I think a little more concretely about how much the relationship between you and me has matured and deepened, I am left with many regrets.

6. In terms of my relationship with God, I am a pastor who believes that I always walk closely with the Lord, but if I am asked to talk about how much effort I have made for the growth of my own faith and maturity, my thoughts don’t seem to organize very well, and that bothers my heart.

7. With such a heart, I have also thought deeply about what kind of “thanksgiving to God” I am sharing with you today—what kind of thanksgiving I am talking about, and from where the content of this thanksgiving comes.

8. As someone who confesses Jesus Christ as King of kings, for what am I truly thankful?

9. Long ago, when I was entering the United States from Korea, I once got sent to secondary inspection at immigration. I think there was some problem with my I-20, so my family and I had to wait in the secondary inspection room for two hours until everything was checked. After almost two hours, once an officer spoke with the school staff and confirmed that I was a student, he came and said, “It has been confirmed that you are a student, so you are free to go.” I left with a sigh of relief, but immediately I began to worry about finding our luggage.

10. I hurried to the baggage claim area, only to be told that the conveyor belt that sends out the luggage had broken down, so the bags hadn’t started coming out yet. Maybe about ten minutes later, the luggage finally began to appear.

11. I had thought it would be a struggle to find our bags, but while I was stuck in the secondary inspection room for those two hours, the baggage had not come out at all—how thankful is that?

12. When I told this story, a friend who was studying with me said this: “Then what about the people who couldn’t get their luggage for two hours and had to wait, and then missed their connecting flight?”

13. It occurred to me that what is a reason for thanksgiving to me might be a time of suffering to someone else.

14. From that time on, I began to think that there is such a thing as “real thanksgiving” and “fake thanksgiving.”

15. Here, I felt that as people of faith, we should not simply speak about the sort of thanksgiving that the world usually talks about, but that as those who have a special faith that enables us to give thanks to God, we need to be able to discern clearly what kind of thanksgiving we are to offer.

16. Today’s passage is almost the final section of the letter Paul wrote to the church in Philippi.

17. The church in Philippi was the very first church Paul established after he crossed from Asia into Europe.

18. From Troas in Asia Minor he sailed to Neapolis and then went up into the city of Philippi. On the Sabbath he went to the riverside to find devout Jews, and there he met Lydia. Lydia immediately received baptism, and from that moment the church in Philippi began.

19. As you know well, Paul is often remembered as a self-supporting missionary who made tents for a living, but the church in Philippi is also known as the only church that supported Paul personally.

20. Lydia, the seller of purple cloth, was a wealthy merchant who sold the most expensive clothing at the time, so it seems that what began as her personal support expanded into support at the level of the whole church.

21. So for Paul, the Philippian church was special. At the time he wrote his letter to the Philippians, Paul was in prison. We do not know exactly what prompted him to write the letter, but it seems that within the church there was a significant conflict between two women, Euodia and Syntyche.

22. In the preceding passage we see that Paul mentions these two women by name and urges them “to be of the same mind in the Lord.” From this, we can see that Paul was actively dealing with a conflict of the kind that often arises in churches.

23. After this exhortation ends, we come to today’s passage, which contains a very famous verse.

24. In verse 4: “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!”

25. This verse is famous, partly because we have heard it so often, but for me personally it is also because I wonder: is it really possible, in reality, to “rejoice always”?

26. Even within a single day, my feelings go up and down tens of times; how is it possible to “rejoice always”? For me, this is a great challenge.

27. Paul gives a very clear condition: “in the Lord.” In other words, “if you are in the Lord, then you ought to rejoice always.”

28. Interpreted this way, it becomes an even greater challenge. If I am not rejoicing, then am I not in the Lord? Is it that I am not truly abiding in the Lord, and therefore am unable to experience genuine joy?

29. The word translated “rejoice” in today’s passage is εὐφραίνω (euphrainō). It means to make glad, to have one’s heart brightened; it can be translated as to exult, to rejoice, or to be glad.

30. Where do people today look for joy? When we think about it, it seems closely tied to what we call “happiness.” A few days ago someone told me how happy they were because Nvidia stock had gone up a lot—but the very next day it dropped, and they told me how bad they felt.

31. Can we truly measure our joy by these kinds of economic values?

32. When I asked myself, “When have I felt joyful?” I realized that, these days, most of my joy comes through the work of the church. Put differently, if you ask, “When is your heart the most hurt?” the answer would also be: most of the time, it’s because of things related to church.

33. When are you most joyful?

34. My son often talks about the “theory of happiness.” Whatever you eat, whichever college you attend, whichever job you get, he insists that you must be happy—no matter what.

35. When I sometimes ask him, he confidently says that he is happy right now! I am very envious. I wonder, what is it that makes him constantly so happy?

36. One day he said that in the future he thinks he would be happy if he could “sit in an apartment in New York, looking out the window at the setting sun, with a cat sitting beside me.”

37. I don’t really understand it, and I wonder if he knows how much an apartment in New York costs. And if he wants to raise a cat, as a parent my rational judgement and nitpicking says that he should first take good care of the dog we already have before talking about getting another animal. But those rational comments can sound so cold that it almost seems as if I am threatening my son’s happiness.

38. I sometimes wonder: if I could move away from this cold rationality, might I be able to be more joyful and happy?

39. Jürgen Moltmann once said that the reason modern life is so full of boredom and emptiness is that our relationships are driven by the pursuit of amusement and interest. But as I think about it now, it may be that this boredom and emptiness come not so much from clinging to interest-driven relationships, as from being excessively realistic and cold.

40. We need to allow people to dream a little, but instead we speak too coldly.

41. In fact, as all of you have experienced, there is a big gap between what we imagine and the reality we face. A representative example is marriage.

42. There is a poem written by a mother who attended a poetry class at a literary center. The title is “Thinking of My Husband”: “When he was alive, I used to think, ‘I could live if only this man weren’t here.’ But now that he’s gone, I can’t live because he isn’t here. Truly, in a previous life he must have been my mortal enemy.”

43. When I read this poem, I felt like asking my own mother the same question: “Is it really like that?”

44. When we think about such things, we realize that rejoicing is not as easy as it sounds.

45. As I mentioned earlier, Paul is currently in prison. He is writing this letter from a Roman prison, and the believers in Philippi who receive the letter know very well that Paul is imprisoned.

46. For the Philippians, reading a letter from such a Paul and then hearing the words, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” must have been a great shock.

47. Paul did not write this letter to the Philippians out of a light and joyful mood. There were problems in the church, and in order to resolve them he wrote what we now politely call an exhortation—but in reality it was a letter written out of concern, fearing that the church might be divided.

48. In such a letter, Paul does not appeal for his own safety or complain about his hardships. Instead, he asks the believers in Philippi to rejoice always in the Lord.

49. In verse 5 he also asks them to “let your gentleness be known to everyone.” And the reason he gives is: “the Lord is near.”

50. The word for gentleness is πραΰτης (praütēs), translated as gentleness or humility.

51. Here Paul distinguishes between the act of rejoicing always and the act of displaying gentleness. Rejoicing is something he urges them to do—it is a request that they must live this way. Gentleness, however, is something the believers in Philippi already possess.

52. Paul remembers these two things: the expectation he has for them and the actions they already display. He longs for the church and the believers in Philippi to be firmly established in these two things. And there is a very clear reason: “The Lord is near.”

53. Each of you has your own image of the church. These days it has become even more complicated. For some, the church is the ark of salvation. For others, the church is the community that fulfills the gospel of Jesus Christ. For others still, it is a place of fellowship.

54. Some may think of church as the place where, once a week, they can speak Korean with other Koreans and share the joy of eating together.

55. But what we must clearly remember is what Paul says today: “The Lord is near.” Because of this, he urges us to make evident the characteristic the church already has—gentleness—and to rejoice always.

56. For us, “the Lord is near” signifies the end, the last days. Our understanding of such a time often carries a sense of urgency or the fear of imminent judgement. But Paul presents it as the reason we should rejoice always, and as the reason we should display what we have always been meant to show.

57. He then continues with another very famous verse: “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

58. It seems that the “last days” Paul proclaims are not at all the fearful image we often have in mind.

59. Today, spreading the gospel is no longer a matter of risking our lives and facing persecution as in the past, so we can no longer see the same kind of intensity or desperation. This atmosphere is often described as a time of crisis for the church because things are not the way they used to be.

60. If I talk about the old days, back then the church’s zeal was excessive. We held early morning prayer every day—at 5 a.m.—and during the special 40-day early morning prayer meeting, even the youth group had a scheduled day to sing a special song. We practiced and gathered early in the morning.

61. In those early hours there were older sisters in the church who arrived already fully made up, while others barely dragged themselves out of bed and showed up. We compared them and talked about them, but in those days everyone was full of zeal.

62. Why was there such overflowing zeal? Because it was needed for the sake of the kingdom of God and to build up the church firmly.

63. Does that mean such zeal is no longer needed today?

64. Today Paul reminds us that the day of Jesus’ coming—the last day—is, contrary to what we might think, a special day on which we can rejoice even more. This means that the church and believers living today still need zeal, and that true joy becomes possible only when such zeal and expectation for the kingdom of God are present together.

65. In this sense, I believe that the thanksgiving we are to confess is not simply thanksgiving for the common things people experience in ordinary life—success, income, or fruits beyond their expectations. Rather, as Christians who still wait for the day of Jesus’ coming, and as the believing community called Open Church, our thanksgiving must be a joy that reveals what we already possess, and an expectation and hope that, because the Lord is with us each day, we can always rejoice in the Lord. This, I believe, will lead us into a confession of thanksgiving.

66. The very first Thanksgiving was celebrated after the settlers had established themselves in the New World, wondering whether they would even survive there. They offered thanks to God because their crops had grown well.

67. Their thanksgiving at that time was a thanksgiving of awe that they could live lives delivered from fear. It was thanksgiving that, though they could have died, they had not died but lived.

68. Paul says, “Rejoice in the Lord always,” and that the day of Jesus’ coming is drawing near, so “let your gentleness be evident to all.” And then: “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

69. This confession is not spoken merely so that the church in Philippi might do well. Rather, it is a confession that, even though Paul himself is in a situation where by human standards he should not be able to say such things, if we remember God’s plan, God’s grace, God’s love, and above all the gospel of Jesus Christ, then we too can live a life of special thanksgiving—rejoicing and not worrying, unchangingly, wherever and whenever we may be.

70. Beloved members of Open Church! Life is not easy. It will continue to be intense, and our young adults may feel as if their bodies and hearts are being torn apart by various competitions. Our lives are all similar in this way. But we are different. Rejoice always in the Lord, and I pray that you will confess your thanksgiving for what you already possess.