Even if we dread deadlines, most of us will admit that we work better when we have a deadline staring us in the face. But few of us have to face the kind of deadline the White House staff does when they welcome a new President to D.C.
Kate Anderson Brower has written a New York Times best-selling book titled The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House which shares a behind-the-scenes look at all the work that goes into the Presidential transition. There are only about 90-100 residential staff members at the White House, and it is their job to prepare the White House whenever a new President moves in. However, they can’t start their preparations until the sitting President moves out. That means they only get about six hours on Inauguration Day to clean, decorate and prepare the official residence of the President of the United States.
Some of us can’t get our own houses spic and span in six hours, so I can’t imagine cleaning the White House in that time. And that’s not all the residential staff does. They also move in and unpack the boxes of personal items for the new President and his or her family. They stock the White House kitchen with the new family’s favorite foods and fill the bathrooms with their favorite shampoo. By the time the new President and his or her family arrive, every room should be perfectly cleaned, decorated, and stocked with the new First Family’s belongings. All the boxes should be gone. And all this is hidden from the view of the public and news cameras surrounding the White House on Inauguration Day. (1)
And if you think the White House residential staff has a hard job preparing for a new President, imagine how hard the U.S. Secret Service works to protect the President. Interviews with Secret Service agents describe the incredible amount of work that goes into preparing for a presidential trip.
It requires thousands of people to coordinate all the details of such a trip. At least three months before a U.S. president travels anywhere, Secret Service agents travel there first. They meet with local agencies, plan the motorcade route from the airport, and contact the nearest trauma hospital.
Agents also remove all phones and TVs from the hotel rooms in which the president and his staff will be staying. They sweep the rooms for listening or recording devices, even taking apart the picture frames to check them.
In the days immediately before the visit, agents close off the city streets surrounding the President’s route and hotel. They even shut down highways for the presidential motorcade. On the day of the President’s visit, they bring in bomb-sniffing dogs to check out all the stops along the way.
Finally, it requires six airplanes to transport the President and all the President’s staff and equipment for a presidential visit. In addition to all the security agents and staff, the planes carry communication equipment, helicopters and the presidential motorcade’s limousines. (2)
One thing is for certain: the President can’t just slip into town unnoticed.
Which makes the Advent season, the season when we celebrate the coming of the Messiah, so amazing. Because if it weren’t for John the Baptist, Jesus might have slipped into town unnoticed. Jesus didn’t have an advance team or security detail to prepare for his arrival. He didn’t even have a public relations firm send out a press release. Instead, he had John, a traveling preacher, who was chosen by God to announce the Good News.
Dressed in wild animal skins, eating locusts and wild honey, John the Baptist would stand out in any congregation. Yet this was the man God chose to announce the coming of the Messiah. “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, `Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”
During this season of Advent you and I are preparing our hearts to celebrate Christ’s coming. We are buying our gifts, putting out our brightly colored lights, baking special treats for family and friends. The preparation and anticipation are part of the joy of Christmas. But are such preparations adequate? In light of John’s message, there are some other things we need to do if we are truly going to be ready for his coming.
Preparation for the coming of Christ means, first of all, repentance. Luke tells us that John came preaching a gospel of repentance. Give it some thought. How else would one prepare for the coming of the Son of God? The Bible tells us that God is holy, holy, holy! When the biblical writers want to add emphasis, they use repetition. God is holy, holy, holy! He is a God of righteousness and justice. How else could unholy people such as you and I receive the Lord’s own anointed unless we repent?
A few years back, a man named Frank Warren handed out 3,000 self-addressed stamped postcards to random people on the street. Warren asked the recipients to write their deepest secrets on these postcards. He warned them not to sign the postcards. He wanted the senders to remain anonymous. He only asked that they mail their postcards back to him. Word spread of Frank Warren’s project, and people from all over the country began sending him anonymous cards with their confessions, secrets, regrets and longings. Many of the postcards are featured on the website PostSecret.com and in Warren’s book, The Secret Lives of Men and Women: A PostSecret Book.
Among the many anonymous cards Warren received is one that features a photo of a pair of hands clasped in prayer. Beneath the photo were the words, “I don’t know how to go back to God, and I want to more than anything else in the world.” (3)
“I don’t know how to go back to God, and I want to more than anything else in the world.” That’s what repentance does. In a literal sense, repentance is changing your mind, turning it back in the right direction. In his baptism of repentance, John the Baptist was offering people the opportunity to align their mind with the mind of God.
The second step in preparing for the coming of Christ is a commitment to right living. Now, you might say that is redundant. Repentance involves a commitment to righteous living. But that is not what most people think of when they think of repentance. They think in terms of being sorry for a mistake and of making a promise not to make the same mistake again. They do not understand repentance as a complete change of direction.
The year 2020 will be remembered by many as a time when our nation once again confronted and worked to correct systems of inequality and racism in many different forms. One sign of this change was the number of cities and institutions that decided to remove Confederate statues and symbols from their buildings and public spaces. And during this same time period, tattoo artists across the country reported a surge in the number of clients asking them to transform or remove racist tattoos.
Billy White, owner of Red Rose Tattoo in Zanesville, Ohio, offers his services for free to clients who want to transform or cover up racist tattoos. Some of his clients weren’t aware of the implications of their tattoos when they first got them. Other clients are former members of white supremacist groups. Before White will agree to cover up or remove a racist tattoo, he spends a lot of time with the client. He wants to make sure the client has had a sincere change of heart and mind. Once he is sure that the client truly has given up their racist beliefs, then he covers up or removes their tattoo for free. But Billy White is not the only person who ministers to people seeking a symbol of their changed life.
Atlanta Redemption Ink is a nonprofit organization that provides free tattoo removal for victims of sex trafficking. In 2020, they reported that a significant number of people contacted them asking for help in covering up or removing racist tattoos. Corey Fleischer is founder of the nonprofit Erasing Hate, which organizes volunteers to remove or cover up racist or hateful graffiti in public spaces. In 2020, he has also served as a middleman, helping connect tattoo artists with those who want to rid themselves of such tattoos. Fleischer says of the people who reach out to him, “I don’t care what your backstory is. I care about tomorrow. You want to erase it then I’m going to be there for you . . . And we’re just going to move forward and I’m going to give you a new way in life.” (4)
A commitment to right living is a commitment to move forward into a new way of life. Not a comfortable way of life. A new way of life. There are parts of your life where old and new things can co-exist. In your sock drawer, for instance, you can have old and new socks in the same drawer. Old and new T-shirts. That’s perfectly acceptable. In your living room, you can mix old and new furniture. Interior decorators call that “eclectic.” Perfectly acceptable. But in your life, in the core of your being where you are accountable to God, your Creator, old and new attitudes and priorities and beliefs cannot co-exist. That’s why God promises numerous times in the Bible that He is doing a new thing, that He is making all things new. And before we can receive Jesus, the Messiah, we need to prepare ourselves for a new life. Second Corinthians 5: 17 reads, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” Did you hear that? The old has gone, the new is here! Don’t you want God to do a new thing in you?
Finally, we prepare for the coming of Christ by receiving God’s grace. We are not disciples of John the Baptist—as much as we admire him and as much as we try to heed his words. We are disciples of Jesus. We do repent of our sins. We do try to live righteous lives. But we know that we do not have the power within ourselves to live as we ought to live. So we throw ourselves on God’s mercy. That doesn’t sound like a Christmas-y sentiment, does it? Because guilty people need mercy. Broken people need mercy. Unworthy people need mercy. And that’s what we are. You and me. But we have a God who loves us and is willing to meet us right where we are. That’s why He sent His Son, Jesus, to walk in our shoes. Immanuel—God with us. We depend upon His grace to supply us, unworthy as we are, with a righteousness that only He can give.
On July 26, 1987, while Rev. Walt Everett was preparing to leave for a mission trip with Habitat for Humanity, he got the call that his son, Scott, had been shot and killed by his neighbor, a drug addict named Mike Carlucci. Understandably, Rev. Everett struggled with a horrible anger toward his son’s killer. After meeting other parents in a grief support group, however, he realized that his anger was poisoning his life. He prayed that God would help him to forgive his son’s killer.
One year after his son’s murder, Walt Everett sat down and wrote a letter to Mike Carlucci, who was now serving a five-year prison sentence. In the letter, he offered Carlucci his forgiveness. Mike Carlucci wrote back, and the two men began a regular correspondence. A few months later, Mike Carlucci asked if Walt Everett would visit him in prison. And by the grace of God, these two men created a friendship on the foundation of heartbreak and forgiveness and faith.
When Michael Carlucci’s father died while he was in prison, Rev. Everett preached his funeral sermon. When Carlucci came up for parole, Everett spoke to his parole board. After Carlucci was released from prison, he and Rev. Everett began traveling to churches and schools and prisons to share their story of faith and forgiveness. (5)
The two men were even interviewed on The Today Show. At one point, the host asked Walt Everett if he could ever look at Mike Carlucci and not think about his son’s murder.
Everett replied, “I can never forget what happened to Scott . . . But when I look at Mike, I don’t see the person who harmed Scott. I see somebody who’s been changed by God, and I celebrate that.” (6)
“I see somebody who’s been changed by God, and I celebrate that.” That’s what John the Baptist was sent to announce. That’s what he is offering to you and me today: a chance to be changed by God. To accept Jesus as our Messiah, our Savior. So that when God looks at us, He doesn’t see our past, He doesn’t see our sins. He only sees someone who’s been changed by His grace, and He celebrates that.
Do you want this Christmas season to be like every other Christmas season? Do you ever look back a few days after Christmas with this vague feeling that you missed something really important? That you expected something special to happen and it just didn’t? Maybe the problem is you didn’t expect anything from God. You didn’t prepare for a new life in Christ. It begins with repentance, turning back to God. It requires a commitment to right living. And it means receiving God’s grace and mercy. God is offering it. Now’s the time for you to decide if you are ready to find new life in Jesus Christ, the Messiah.
1. “How White House staff moves one president in, another out in just 5 hours” by Liz Kreutz, ABC7, New York, January 19, 2021, https://abc7ny.com/white-house-move-president-joe-biden-inauguration-donald-trump-transition/9791895/.
2. Information from Ronald Kessler, author of The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents and Jeffrey Robinson, co-author of Standing Next to History: An Agent’s Life Inside the Secret Service. Cited in “13 ways Secret Service agents keep the president safe when he travels” by Anna Marum, The Oregonian/OregonLive, Posted May 6, 2013, updated January 9, 2019, https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2015/05/13_ways_secret_service_agents.html.
3. Rodney Buchanan, https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/jacob-finding-your-way-back-home-rodney-buchanan-sermon-on-forgiveness-in-jesus-102067.
4. “As Statues Of America’s Racist Past Were Removed This Year, So Were Tattoos” by Jonaki Mehta, December 30, 2020, NPR.org, Copyright 2020, NPR, https://www.wfdd.org/story/statues-americas-racist-past-were-removed-year-so-were-tattoos.
5. “Forgiveness Helped Grieving Father Let Go Of Crippling Anger” by Susan Campbell, Special to the Courant September 25, 2014, https://www.courant.com/courant-250/hc-250-minister-walter-everett-forgave-sons-killer-20140928-story.html.
6. “After his son was murdered, Walt Everett did what few would. He reached out to the man who killed him.” by Christopher Hann. Photos by Bill Cardoni, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pa. September 2011, http://www.drew.edu/news/2016/04/21/uncommon-bond.