A Special Night at Ground Zero
This sermon is reprinted with permission by Rev. Joe Parrish
St. John's Episcopal Church
61 Broad Street, Elizabeth, New Jersey 07201
The First Sunday after the Epiphany: The Baptism of our Lord (A)
A Sermon by the Rev. Joe Parrish
Friday night as I worked my weekly shift as a World Trade Center morgue
Chaplain, at about eleven o’clock in the evening I was taken down to the “Pit”
at the World Trade Center to bless the remains of a firefighter that had been
found at about the fourth basement level of Tower Two. My friend from the morgue
went along with me. I think he was the only one who was not a Caucasian person.
And as we left the temporary morgue together to go down in the Fire Department
cat tractor, one of the Emergency Medical Team workers who was accompanying us
mumbled in my friend’s direction something like, “Have they changed the
directive?” I ignored the comment and just got into the front seat while my
friend rode in the back seat behind me. We wound our way through the heavy mud
across Church Street in the vehicle, crossing in front of New York City buses that now regularly run north and south up and down
Church Street through
what was one time an ultra-high security area and crime scene.
We
drove through the wide gated construction entrance at the corner of Church and
Liberty, past several huge trucks carrying up tons of debris, and on into the
Pit just a half-block west down from the morgue, past the eastern perimeter of
the World Trade Center, where we entered into no man’s land. The firefighters
were escorting us, and the guards at the entrance just waved us on inside. We
splashed through more and more thick, heavy mud, across a slight rise and headed
steeply downward on a huge artificially created muddy slope that led on to the
bottom of the great containment basin of the World Trade Center that holds back
the seepage from the Hudson River only two blocks away to the West. I looked
over to my right and saw what appeared to be a huge shallow pool of water and
thought to myself
that the containment wall must have a small leak; of course it
had rained the day before and the water now collected there could have come from
the rain. It was perhaps seventy or so feet from the top to the bottom of the
Pit, but when you are inside, it feels like you are about two hundred feet deep
because of the enormity of the scale of everything!
The giant containment wall loomed above us like Hoover Dam. I visually checked each section of the wall knowing what the Army Corps engineer had told me and another chaplain two months before, that the wall needed to be shored up basement by basement before the full excavation could be completed. I could see at least three basement levels in the southwest corner of the containment wall had been secured. Two more basement levels remain to be finished. The workers at each basement level drill horizontally into the containment wall and on into the bedrock beyond some seventy-five feet interior to the wall and anchor a steel plate on the wall with about twelve one inch steel cables that connect onto a vertical piling that had been drilled vertically down about a hundred feet into the rock and seventy-five feet over from the containment wall surface. One can easily see the place of the vertical rod connections protruding up at the surface because each one is surrounded by a four foot round concrete culvert pipe placed on end at the surface that protects the mooring rod and seals it in with concrete down into the bedrock below; the process that is used is very much like drilling a well. It takes very skilled engineering to intersect the horizontal cables with the vertical rods and anchor them together. Drilling equipment is maneuvered to place the vertical support pipe down into the bedrock. My friend in the back of the tractor just looked around with a bit of anxiety at all the clanking machinery and huge banks of blue white lights that eerily but completely illuminate all parts of the Pit at night.
As
we approached the third basement level going steeply down in this huge open
quarry-like pit, I saw about two or three dozen firefighters gathered over
towards the left side of our tractor, which is
the south side of what one time
had been Building Two, the one that collapsed first on September 11. Remember
the cross section of each building is a full acre in area so the scale of this
construction and recovery effort is absolutely enormous. It is hard to imagine
the size until one gets right into the middle of the sunken pit that one time
was a ten-story high pile of debris, and before that, a one-hundred-ten-story
building.
Finally the driver swung our cat tractor over to the left where the firefighters were carefully digging with hand shovels and hand-held picks. The billion tons of steel and metal from the World Trade Center had packed the material inside the Pit so hard it was like rock. Each body has been compacted with pile driver like force, and it takes considerable time and effort to extract each piece, somewhat like clearing away rock in the northwestern United States to recover dinosaur bones. The line of firefighters wound around down about twenty-five feet on our left, marking a crude footpath up from where the actual recovery was taking place. Everyone seemed to hover around the pathway, looking for the gurney to appear. Suddenly a person wearing a collar came up to me and introduced himself as the “Pit Chaplain.” He was a young Roman Catholic priest from Minnesota who said he had been down in the Pit since early morning. He was very wide-eyed to see me, perhaps because he was not expecting to see a chaplain from the surface appear at that level of the basement.
And I surely was not expecting to see him. We quickly conferred about what each of us would do for this liturgical moment. We agreed I would say the opening prayers for the person, for the person’s bereaved family that they might finally be able to find closure about their loved one, and also I always pray for the recovery workers themselves. But the Pit Chaplain said that when he used the Lord’s Prayer earlier, the workers seemed hesitant to pray along with him. I told him that that was OK, but we always used the Lord’s Prayer, and those who wanted to pray with us did, and the rest would listen politely. As it turned out, most of the firefighters did say the Lord’s Prayer along with me. Then he was going to read a prayer for a person of service from his little black prayer book and give the final committal. Just as we got the details straightened out, up came the American flag-covered gurney from below, winding its way towards us being carried gently and caringly in the hands of four mud-covered firefighters from below. My friend from the morgue looked tentatively at some of the workers there who gently smiled back at him. It was clearly good that he came along.
The other chaplain and I tried to slowly work our way through all the firefighters to get to where the gurney was heading up. Then we had to back up as it became apparent that there was not enough flat area to do the prayers except back up at the third basement level. Finally the gurney came up to where we were standing, and we began the somewhat impromptu prayer service. The Lieutenant called the others to attention, and we all removed our hard hats. The huge digging machines all around us in that enormous area seemed to come to a quiet standstill as had happened in my earlier experience in the recovery of the remains of two other firefighters beside the PATH train tracks in the fifth basement. As I said my part of the prayers, the other chaplain sprinkled holy water across the American flag covering the body bag. We completed the service, and the gurney was respectfully placed onto our lead cat tractor that had brought my friend and I down to the Pit. There was only enough room for three now the flag-covered gurney was aboard, so I left my friend and the other chaplain back in the Pit as I and the two EMT workers hung onto the gurney and slowly made our way in the tractor back up to the top of the ridge being followed by a Fire Department SUV with its red lights blinking, on through the security gate, passing several police and construction workers who stood at attention and saluted as we made our way slowly up the incline beside them.
And on up we went across Church Street and back the half block east up Liberty Street to the temporary morgue, which is affectionately called, “t-mort” for “temporary mortuary”. Once we were at t-mort which is only a few hundred feet west of the hustle and bustle of downtown Broadway, the firefighters lifted the flag-covered gurney out of the tractor and carried it on inside the simply constructed morgue where the other EMT workers had remained. They took it into the back section of the morgue where we would again say prayers, the black body bag would be opened by the medical examiner, the remains would be photographed by a member of the police medical-legal team, and then be re-zipped into the body bag and moved out of the temporary morgue through the back door. We saw another honor guard had assembled just outside the door of the morgue. Again on the Lieutenant’s command we removed our hard hats, saluted, and the gurney was carried a few short feet to a waiting Fire Department ambulance that would whisk the remains up to Bellevue Hospital to the permanent morgue and the DNA laboratory to begin the tedious identification process. So far nearly six hundred individuals have been positively identified, including members of service--firefighters and police--plus civilians.
My
friend’s name by the way is “Nikie”. He weighs one hundred twenty pounds, he’s
eight years old, and he is a very gentle and large Golden Retriever dog. He is
the only certified “care dog” working at the World Trade Center site. I
mentioned him in a sermon here once before, misspelling his name as “N-I-K-E”.
He is really “N-I-K-I-E”, but
his name is pronounced like “Nike”, the athletic sneaker shoe brand and also the Greek goddess
of victory, but this Nikie is a male. His owner is a disaster counselor named
Frank who has owned
Nikie since he was a small five-week old puppy. They live in Montclair, New
Jersey. And we hope to get them to come visit some of the younger children in
the elementary schools around here one day soon. Nikie is marvelous with little
children, Frank said. In fact Nikie is marvelous with everyone. They all want to
pat him, talk to him, tickle his throat, and so on. Nikie has a marvelous way
with people, and he seems to bask in all the attention. I have never heard even
one peep of sound out of him; he never barks. And he is totally dedicated to his
job. Frank said Nikie gets quite sluggish and even a bit depressed if he does
not get down to Ground Zero every day or two. At home if he has not gotten to
Ground Zero for more than two days, he will go around in the house to find his
halter and the little black booties he wears on his paws and bring them to the
door leading out of the house. And if that does not get
Frank’s attention, he will go get
Frank’s shoes and carry them to
the door as well. Nikie works mostly the nine PM to three AM shift, a time when
the workers seem to get the most introspective in the eerie blue-white lights on
the site at night.
In
a way, Nikie represents to me an embodiment of “God with us”, much like Jesus
did to his disciples in the first century. It was through
Jesus’ baptism in the River
Jordan that we learned our
Lord’s closeness with his Heavenly Father. As the Holy Spirit descended on him,
we beheld his likeness as God’s Beloved Son. His divinity was acknowledged
though his humanity. And the world would never be the same. Now we had a
Redeemer, one who could really save us from our sins. We would have to look no
further. Emmanuel was with us.
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It is a long way from the Jordan River to Ground Zero and Elizabeth, New Jersey. But the distances are microscopic relative to the star that shown so brightly to bring the wise men and women to the house of Mary and Joseph. The one who had been present and active in the creation of the heavens, the stars, and the earth had come to our little planet and had taken on the role of a slave for all of us. He looked upon us as his very own brothers and sisters. He was very much more than Nikie who needs the strokes of humans to feel alive, for he was the embodiment of Life itself. Jesus stood alone between us and eternal death and damnation. He absorbed all the hurt and pain of our sins. He broke the curse of death for all who believe in him. And he lives forever in glory now with his Father in heaven.
The baptism of our Lord speaks reams about how God cares for us, how God never leaves us, and how God always remembers each of us just as God remembered the purpose and miracle of second birth God’s Son would offer to us all. What God has given us through God’s Beloved Son comforts us in our loneliness and pain; we only need to accept him as our Lord and Savior. The sign of baptism that separates us from all others becomes a sign that we too one day will be able to cross the barrier of eternity to a life fuller than we could ever imagine. And the comfort that we wish for and seek in this life will forever be ours in the life to come.
The light of God has shown forth in the world, and the darkness has not overcome it. Come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord!
Amen.
P.S. A note of appreciation from the K-9 Disaster Relief Organization.
Since September 11th we all try to help. Nikie is a gift. A
special canine doing no more or no less than everyone else - together we all
make a difference.
Last night Nikie once again saw his friend "Joe" - - it was a long night. We
came to the "t-mort" around midnight to get a little respite and relief from the
bitter cold - - the wind started kicking up dust and debris. It was icy and one
of Nikie's boots came off - we didn't know where it was on the 16-acre site. One
of the EMT's driving a "gator" stopped and said, "Hey Nikie - - we found one of
your boots on site and brought it to the morgue - - we put it on the heater for
you."
After a few moments of respite the quiet morgue suddenly became busy - - a
firefighter's "bunker gear" was brought in, along with his cell phone
bundled in the remnants of the cloth. It was early morning now so I got Nikie's
warm boot and went back to the big white tent called the "bubble" on the
far side of the World Trade Center site. We go through the decontamination water
station and than to Nikie's special spot to rest
in the rear part of the bubble
away from the tables and eating area. I need rest too . . . and a little peace
and quiet; a time to relax, reflect and "decompress" from our night
and morning walking Ground Zero.
New volunteers come up to pet Nikie - - they ask question after question. I politely say that Nikie has been working and needs some time to be alone. "What does he do?" There is really no way to explain, so I say that he makes people feel better. They ask more questions.
I'm tired, but try to be polite - - if only I had a job description.
Now, thanks to Joe's sermon, I can give them a copy and say "here - read this."
Thank you Joe. It was a joy to
meet the children at St. John's Episcopal Church . . . and we look forward to
visiting the elementary schools
in Elizabeth
.
P.S. You were correct in your first sermon. Nikie's proper name is "NiCad Batteries
Rechargeable." His father was "Eveready Batteries
not Included." He got the nickname "Nike" as a puppy. Since
September 11th to avoid the appearance that the sneaker company had a golden
retriever, the spelling was changed to "Nikie." Yes, he does wear special boots
at Ground Zero - - they are not made by Nike! His paws are "X-Large" and
are generously made for him by a wonderful company in Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Photo at St. John's Episcopal Church