"Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God" (Romans 15:7). Acceptance is one of the quietest forms of love. It does not excuse what someone has done, but it refuses to leave them standing alone.
This story about acceptance, retold in our own words, comes from a funeral in Washington in January 1978, when a disgraced former president walked into a room full of people who did not know what to say to him. It ends with a takeaway for sermons or personal reflection.
Story in this post:
Welcome Home, Mr. President: Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon
This story is widely told in sermons and is usually credited to the Methodist preacher Maxie Dunnam, who cites a report in Newsweek. The setting is well documented; we have not been able to locate the original magazine report or confirm the exact words of the greeting, so they are given here as the story tells them.
Hubert H. Humphrey served as Vice President of the United States under Lyndon Johnson and spent most of his life in public service. When he died in January 1978, people came from across the country and around the world to honour him, and his body lay in state in the Capitol in Washington.
Among the mourners was a man few expected to see there. Richard Nixon had resigned the presidency in disgrace in August 1974 after the Watergate scandal, and he had not set foot in the nation's capital since. According to the Michigan Daily's report at the time, the memorial service was his first visit to Washington since his resignation. Senator Dave Durenberger later told the Senate that Humphrey himself had arranged for Nixon to be received with the full honour due to a former president.
Honour on paper is one thing. Warmth in a room is another. As the story is told, Nixon stood among the dignitaries, and almost everyone around him found somewhere else to look. Old colleagues kept their distance. Conversations drifted away from him. Eyes slid past him. Nobody was openly cruel, but the message was plain: he was the man who had brought shame on himself and on the office, and nobody wanted to be seen standing next to him. Nixon felt it. He stood alone, a former president of the United States, shut out in a crowded room.
Then the sitting president, Jimmy Carter, came in. Carter belonged to the other party. He had run for office in 1976 promising Americans that he would never lie to them, a campaign shaped by the memory of Watergate, and he was known as a man of honesty and deep Christian conviction. If anyone had a reason to keep his distance from Nixon, politically and personally, it was Carter.
As Carter made his way toward his seat, he noticed Nixon standing on his own. He changed direction. He walked straight over to the man everyone else was avoiding, held out his hand and, with a broad, genuine smile, embraced him and said, "Welcome home, Mr. President! Welcome home!"
The moment was brief, but people noticed. The story says that Newsweek wrote of it: if there was a turning point in Nixon's long years in the wilderness, it was that moment, that small act of love and compassion.
It cost Carter nothing but a few steps and a little pride. Yet for a man who had become a symbol of disgrace, it meant that someone was still willing to call him by his name and his title, to stand beside him in public, and to say, in effect, "You still belong here."
Takeaway: Acceptance does not mean pretending that wrong was never done. It means refusing to let someone's worst moment be the only thing we see. When we set aside party, ideology and old grudges and welcome one another, we can change another person's life, and our own. That is how Christ welcomed us: "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).
Source: Sermon illustration told by Maxie Dunnam, citing Newsweek (original report not located). Background on Nixon's attendance from the Michigan Daily, January 1978, and the Congressional Record, 2 May 1994.
Final thoughts
Most of us will never stand in the Capitol Rotunda, but all of us know what it is like to walk into a room where someone is being quietly shut out. The question this story asks is simple: will we cross the room?
Who in your life needs to hear, in words or actions, "Welcome home"?
More stories you may like:
These stories are retold in our own words for teaching and reflection. Sources are credited under each story.
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