Unlikely Rescue at Ground Zero (Sermon Illustration)
Jesus left heaven and came to earth on a rescue mission. In the same way, he rescued us, we have joined the rescue mission to seek and save lost people.
When the World Trade Center crumbled to the ground on that dreadful day of September 11, 2001, more than three thousand people died. But a few of those who were buried beneath the rubble miraculously survived the toppling of the towers. Two of these individuals were Will Jimeno and John McLoughlin, a pair of Port Authority employees who responded to the attacks and were on the bottom floor when the south tower began to fall. They raced to an elevator shaft and amazingly survived the one-hundred-story collapse around them, but were buried dozens of feet down in the midst of an array of rubble. Trapped without water, breathing smoke-filled air, both Will and John had little hope of survival.
Yet as they lay there, pinned under a mountain of debris, something was stirring inside an accountant in Connecticut they had never met.
Dave Karnes, who had spent twenty-three years active duty in the Marine Corps, was watching the scene play out on television just like the rest of us. But more than allowing it merely to trouble him, he decided to do something about it. He went to his boss and told him he wouldn’t be back for a while. Dave went to a barber shop, asked for a high-and-tight haircut, then stopped by his home to put on his military fatigues, hoping the uniform would allow him access into the blocked-off area surrounding Ground Zero. He drove to Manhattan at speeds of 120 miles an hour and arrived by late afternoon. While rescue workers were being called off the wreckage pile because of danger, Dave was able to stay because of the clout and credential that came with his military uniform. Finding another Marine nearby, the two men walked the pile together, seeking to save the lost.
After an hour of searching, they heard the faint sound of tapping pipes and yelling. Will and John had been trapped for nine hours by that time, completely incapable of working themselves free. Yet in the midst of all the rubble, a Marine who earlier in the morning had been working a spreadsheet in Connecticut found them. Of the twenty people pulled from the heaped-up remains of the World Trade Center, Will Jimeno and John McLoughlin were numbers eighteen and nineteen. And all because Dave Karnes took off his suit, put on rescue fatigues, and stepped into the despair and darkness of Ground Zero.
In the same way (but to an infinitely greater degree), God took off His royal robes, stepped into our dark and depraved culture, and served us. We were buried in the depths and rubble of our own foolishness with zero chance of pulling ourselves out of our own sin.
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