This piece began life as a meditation on one of the Last Seven Words of Christ one Holy Week many years ago. I don’t think it makes much less sense today than it did then.
In 1944, Lt. Hiroo Onoda was sent by the Japanese army to the remote Philippine island of Lubang. His mission was to conduct guerrilla warfare during World War II. Unfortunately, he was never officially told the war had ended; so for 29 years, Onoda continued to live in the jungle, ready for when his country would again need his services and information. Eating coconuts and bananas and deftly evading searching parties he believed were enemy scouts, Onoda hid in the jungle until he finally emerged from the dark recesses of the island on March 19, 1972.
Onoda was supposed to blow up the pier at the harbor and destroy the Lubang airfield. Unfortunately, his garrison commanders, who were worried about other matters, decided not to help Onoda on his mission and soon the island was overrun by the Allies. The remaining Japanese soldiers, Onoda included, retreated into the inner regions of the island and split up into groups of 3 or 4.
Onada’s cell very close together, with very limited supplies: the clothes they were wearing, a small amount of rice, and each had a gun with limited ammunition. Rationing the rice was difficult and caused fights, but they supplemented it with coconuts and bananas. Every once in a while, they were able to kill a civilian’s cow for food.
Onoda first saw a leaflet that claimed the war was over in October 1945. When another cell had killed a cow, they found a leaflet left behind by the islanders which read: “The war ended on August 15. Come down from the mountains!”2 But as they sat in the jungle, the leaflet just didn’t seem to make sense, for another cell had just been fired upon a few days ago. If the war were over, why would they still be under attack? No, they decided, the leaflet must be a clever ruse by the Allied propagandists.
Leaflet after leaflet was dropped. Newspapers were left. Photographs and letters from relatives were dropped. Friends and relatives spoke out over loudspeakers. But there was always something suspicious, so they never believed that the war had really ended.
Finally, having lost all of his cell and living alone for years, Lt. Onada was located by a Japanese tourist who then located Onada’s commander from the Japanese army. Only his command could convince him that the war was truly over. When at last he heard the command to surrender he described his reaction:
Suddenly everything went black. A storm raged inside me. I felt like a fool for having been so tense and cautious on the way here. Worse than that, what had I been doing for all these years?
Gradually the storm subsided, and for the first time I really understood: my thirty years as a guerrilla fighter for the Japanese army were abruptly finished. This was the end.
I pulled back the bolt on my rifle and unloaded the bullets. . . .
I eased off the pack that I always carried with me and laid the gun on top of it. Would I really have no more use for this rifle that I had polished and cared for like a baby all these years? Or Kozuka’s rifle, which I had hidden in a crevice in the rocks? Had the war really ended thirty years ago? If it had, what had Shimada and Kozuka died for? If what was happening was true, wouldn’t it have been better if I had died with them?
It is finished.
Jesus said it, I believe it.
It’s finished, the war for our souls was finished on the Cross, and still so many of us live like we’re still alone on one of the islands of the Philippines, carrying on a war of futility.
It’s time to come out of the jungle and accept the grace and mercy and kindness of the Victor!
Many of us live with what I’ve been taught to call a poverty spirit. Those are the times when we are extra careful with the resources that God has put into our hands, using them with the fear that one day they may run out.
We close our fists around our time and our treasure because we have to ration our supplies. We’re cut off from all our support! Our hearts pound every time we have to pay the bills or fill the tank with gas. There may not be enough! We fight with each other over scarce resources like Onada’s men did over rice.
Many of us still treat others as our enemies, killing folks just because they don’t wear our uniform. Oh, we may not pick up a rifle to do it, but we still treat people who are different from us, especially those who don’t know the Gospel, like they’re a threat.
Some of us hide because we know how sinful we are. We believe that if we’re found, we’ll surely die. Everyone out there must be out to get us. If they knew who we were or where we really were, they’d come and destroy us for us for sure. Like Adam and Eve we keep sewing fig leaves together to try to mask ourselves, then we duck for cover any time we might be exposed. Every time we hear the Father’s voice we go running for the bushes. Light is still treated like it’s our enemy.
The only real battle left for us is the one against the lie. We have to fight to free ourselves from the lie, and to free others from the lie. We keep looking at the leaflets God sends telling us the war is over, and we keep insisting the news is too good to be true.
A preacher and teacher I like to listen to, Graham Cooke, says it this way. “Like the old saying, we often say ‘If it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t.’ But in the kingdom, if it ISN’T too good to be true, it isn’t God!”
Like the tourist who finally found Lt. Onada, I’m here to tell you that the war’s over.
If you’re anything like him, you’ll insist on hearing from your commander.
So let me remind you what He, your Commander, said.
It is finished.
