1. The Lost Son

During the period of Lent, we are invited to reflect on forgiveness given to us thanks to the Cross. However, as we learned last Sunday from Luke chapter 13, that without repentance we will be sentenced to perdition. And Today’s lecturing part, Luke chapter 15 from the verse 1, concerns about the repentance. The passage is well known as ‘the Parable of the lost son.’ We must read attentively the story because the lesson includes both of two brothers in their relationship with the father, not only the younger one. The first part of the portion tells about what happened to the latter. But the second part which focuses on the elder son is indispensable to understand the depth of the whole parable. Let us start reading by keeping that point in our mind .

Jesus commenced the teaching this way ; - Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.(Luke 15:11-12)

Perhaps the father and the elder brother might be very so strict with the younger one that he felt the life suffocating.
And he wanted to set off to a huge and free world. Father should be concerned about the future of the young son but he accepted the requirement. The result was as worse as the father worried ; - “Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything. “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. (Luke 15:18)

The young one learned a hard lesson, which led him to say humble words.

I think many of us had similar experience to his. We feel then useless and not deserving love or sympathy of anyone. We might be depressed and state of depression makes us more vulnerable to temptation of death. But, at the very crucial moment, we might hear the voice of heavenly father ; - “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased."(Matthew 3:17), which would make us free from spiritual pain.

The lost son should have heard the same voice, which reminded him of his own father. And remembrance of the relationship with the father led him to repent. This way he decided to get back home not as a son of master but as a servant. ; - I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’ (Luke 15:19) He was sufficiently aware of his sin and ready to undergo any punishment.

But the reaction of the father was unexpected because he missed so much the lost son and was thinking about him every day. Thereby ; - while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.(Luke 15:20)

Then the son commenced to apologize. But ; - the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate.’ (Luke 15:22-24)

Father wanted to welcome him as a beloved child and said to servants, ” Put a ring on his finger.” The ring might be a chevalier ring, which suggested that he intended to give the lost son the title of heir again. In short, he forgave sin of the son without condition by saying ; - This son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.(Luke 15:24)

2. The lost older brother

From the verse 25, Luke develops the second part of the story, in which focus is on the older son. After departure of the younger brother he had remained with father by keeping household. He was working in the fields On the day of the younger’s return back, he was working in the fields and ; - When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. (Luke 15:24-26 )

The answer was totally unexpected and inadmissible to him. ; - ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’(Luke 15:27)

Luke did not conceal his reaction and father’s reciprocal one ; - “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him.(Luke 15:28)

But, regardless of father’s emotional appeal, the older began to complain bitterly ; - ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’ (Luke 15:29-30)

He was upset. Because he was complacent. He was sure of being righteous, opposite to the younger brother, a sinner in common sense. So much so he found father’s behavior inadmissible. Father forgave the sinner, moreover celebrate his return! The older thought his righteous life deserved to be praised whereas the younger brother deserved a punishment.

Here we will take into consideration the Jewish inheritance law. I contains the clause that assures the firstborn son of the right of a double portion of heritage*. So the older son might remain father’s house by following his calculation on the wealth. We can even guess that he could do similar to his younger brother if he were the second son. For example, his blaming words, ‘this son of yours has squandered your property with prostitutes,’ does not it reveal his unrealized desire?
To be fair, he had been loyal with his father. But respectable attitude could be motivated by material interest, instead of real love. We might say that the elder one was also a lost son.

Nonetheless the father was still loving both of them. Therefore he tried to console the elder ; - ” ‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ “(Luke 15:31-32)

*Firstborn son’s right http://www.askmoses.com/en/article/282,2398/What-are-the-rules-of-inheritance-according-to-Jewish-law.html

3. Father loves both of two

Audience of the parable were Pharisees and law teachers. When they came to Jesus he was talking with tax-collectors. And ; - the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them."(Luke 15:2)

They blamed Jesus because they thought he, as a rabbi, should have segregated those tax-collectors who were considered to be sinners or the impure in the Jewish community. To those Pharisees and law teachers, Jesus told ‘The parable of the lost Son.’ Obviously ‘the lost Son’ alludes to tax-collectors and the elder son, who was not happy for the father’s attitude, represents Pharisees and law teachers. Though Jesus did not give a clear conclusion we can sguess it by following the history. It means that tax-collectors and sinners repented afterwards and followed Jesus whereas Pharisees and law teachers rejected and put him on the Cross. We find similar contrast there between the lost son who repented and was forgiven and the elder brother who did not. Act of repentance distinguished the two groups.

To reflect further on repentance we chose Psalm 23:4 for today’s invocation verse ; - Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

Recently I read a book written by Ernest Gordon, a Scottish Presbyterian dean *. The title is ‘Through the valley of the Kwai*, which referred the very verse. The contents are about a historical event, the construction of the Burma Railway in 1942–43. The Burma-Siam railway was a Japanese project driven by the need for improved communications to support the large Japanese army in Burma. The construction work continued for 18 months to finish 400 kilometers railways. And during the project, approximately 13,000 Commonwealth, Dutch and American prisoners of war died. An estimated 80,000 to 100,000 civilians also died in the course of the project, chiefly forced labour brought from Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, or conscripted in Siam (Thailand) and Burma (Myanmar). The death percentage among the whole labour is reported up to 30%, the fact which suggests how their working and living conditions were harsh. (ref. the death rates of war prisoners of The Allied armed forces in concentration campuses in Germany and Italy is 4% and 10% of Japanese solders in Soviet Union. )

E. Gordon was one of those prisoners. He find human insensitivity to hunger, exhaustion and sickness of others there . Furthermore he felt abandoned and forgotten by his nation, friends and even his family, in other words by God. He literally lived days of ‘ The Valley of the death.’

He was an English officer in his 20s and witnessed lives of prisoners in one of the camps. Many of them were sick being affected by malaria, diphtheria, or jungle ulcers. When they arrived to the critical phase, they were brought to the Death House, a house built by the side of the morgue. The writer was sent there too. He was lying to die on a miserable bed made of bamboo. He was putting curses on such a life. Astonishingly two christians inmates visited the DEAth House to bring a part of their rations and changed bandages of Gordon’s diseased legs and cleaned his body. Such altruistic cares gave Gordon motivation and energy to live. Then he was led to the faith. Because he found acting God behind those christians’ cares. He wrote that there was real love and God was with them. Thus he was touched by God who was working himself to realize a miraculous fact in the Death House of the Kwai River.

Then Gordon began to act with those christians. They continue together taking care of other sick persons, reading the Bible under bamboo trees and observing Sunday worship in fields. They prayed and read passages of the Holy Scripts aloud to encourage dying inmates. Desperate prisoners commenced to show smile again. They also prayed and sang hymns every evening. Just at that moment, Gordon found the kingdom of God inside the camp. He understood and experienced the contents of Psalm 23:4 ; - Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.

After 3 years of captivity, he was set free due to the surrender of Japanese army to American forces in 1945. He went back to Scotland then eventually moved to America where he became the dean of the chapel at Princeton University.

He wrote afterwards that the good news for humans were telling that God would bear their sufferings. Indeed, so still does God through Jesus Christ. Under any circumstances, hard or clement, God is alway with us even during the most painful trials. If those suffering seem destructing us, God shares them, even the death itself, with us. Therefore God came inside the Death House in order to rescue prisoners spirit.

Henri Nouwen, a Dutch-born Catholic** priest, wrote a book , ‘The Return of the Prodigal Son, A Story of Homecoming,’** basing on one of the best known parables of Jesus, ‘The Lost Son.’ Nouwen said in it that the lesson of the parable is not simply about the forgiveness given by God to sinful humans. The story contains also God’s calling to us, the exhortation to become like the father of the lost Son.

The father was also a son of his own father. And at the time of the story he acted as understanding father toward his lost son.
When we also forgive others without condition by accepting their apologies, a miracle happens, as it happened in the concentration camps of the Valley of the death. Gordon could write about a miracle realized there because he died once and was raised from death in spiritual way. The lost son had a similar experience thanks to this father’s love. In contrast, those who looked over the love of father disappear in death, for example many of Gordon’s inmates died without hope. The concentration camp remained hell till their last moment.

We find one of the latter cases in insight of another prisoner in the Valley of the death, Leo Rawlings***, a English artist. He also spent three years and a half there. While a prisoner, he made over a hundred eye-witness paintings of the conditions under which the prisoners lived. Reportedly, he always considered the life in the camp as to be days in hell. What did split the point of view of the two prisoners, or the attitude of the lost son and his older brother toward father? I think that those who learned Jesus’ teaching, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.(Luke 6:36)” arrived to produce fruitful result, the repentance. We also are invited to be humble enough to repent and be forgiven thanks to love of our Father in Heaven.

* Ernest Gordon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Gordon
** Henri Nouwen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Nouwen
Parable of the Prodigal Son http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Prodigal_Son#Literature
*** Leo Rawlings http://www.pbase.com/image/21616838