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Look Out for
the "Hushers"
by Reverend Rich Smith
November 5, 2006
Psalm 84
The older sister warned her little brother he was not
allowed to talk in church. "Who won't let me?" the tyke asked. She
pointed to the back of the church and said, "Those men back there –
they're the hushers."
Today, we’re going to honor those men and women – and children – who
serve Westmoreland as ushers, and perhaps occasionally as “hushers,”
one of many, many groups of folks who comprise the saints of the church
and whose service is invaluable.
Garrison Keillor tells the story of how in “February 1957 twelve men
from Lake Wobegon Lutheran were going to come to Honolulu for the
National Church Ushers Convention, including the finals of the Ushers
Team Competition. The guys had raised thousand of dollars... and had
been drilling for two night s a week for six months, practicing their
silent usher signals, a complicated set of hand and eyebrow signals
like this: cupped hands (it means “need additional hymnal in this
pew”), or crossed arms and kicking motion (“remove this child”), or
fluttering fingers with arms akimbo (“need new collection plate, this
one is too full”), a signal seldom used in church but popular in
contests.
“Nowadays many ushers use walkie-talkies, especially in the big
churches, where they’re called Sanctuary Security.... but back in 1957
they used silent signals and a team of twelve: a head usher, the front
four, five linebackers and two deep safeties. They knew the service
forward and backward, they could run it in their sleep and often did.”
Back in the fifties at Westmoreland, then Vice-President Richard Nixon
would attend Westmoreland, always sitting in the back. After he left
office and went back to California the first time, he returned to his
home church, the Whittier Friends meeting, where my wife’s grandfather
was an usher. He was a staunch Democrat, and loved being able to say
that when Nixon came to church, he put him in his place.
These days ushers don’t generally put people in their place, but a
generation ago, it was common practice to escort worshippers down the
aisle, selecting a spot for them. Sometimes it was so that the front of
the church would fill up first, and sometimes it was because the place
was so crowded people needed assistance to find a space. The 1975
version of the Westmoreland Ushers Manual explains just how this is to
be done, and suggests how ushers should respond should they meet
resistance, if someone doesn’t follow them to the pew selected. That
old manual, by the way, also instructs ushers on how to deal with
“activist-instigated disturbances” to the services and warns against
ushers wearing “far out fashions.”
The role of ushers is always changing, as are ushers themselves. It’s
only in the last generation that ushers have no longer been uniformly
male; in fact, at the church I grew up in, which I always thought was
progressive, the first time a woman ushered was at my ordination, in
1976, and that at my insistence. In the Early church, ushers were
actually called “janitors” – they are mentioned in 2nd century
writings, along with teachers, healers and exorcists, as well as
deacons – and their job was to keep the unbelievers out. Kind of like
the bouncers in our “God is Still Speaking” TV ads, a necessary
function in a time when it was quite dangerous and even illegal to
gather as a Christian community for worship – you didn’t want to be
infiltrated by those who might turn you in to the authorities. So the
function of usher has changed 180 degrees – Now they not only keep
things running smoothly behind the scenes but mostly they are the
welcoming face of the church. As Ralph Wooden wrote in last year’s new
Usher Manual, “The usher’s job has changed over the years....but some
things have not changed. A good usher still shows genuine friendliness
and is still a vital representative of the church, and the worship
experience of all Westmorelanders is still made more meaningful and
pleasant in the quiet atmosphere which can be created and maintained by
good ushering practices.”
You see, the usher’s role is really to create a setting for worship not
unlike that described in the 84th Psalm, which speaks of the joys of
worshiping in God’s Temple, a place often reached at the end of a long
pilgrimage, a place so welcoming that even sparrows and swallows find a
nest. “Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your
praise.”
This Psalm, by the way, also contains the Ushers favorite verse. A
Google search came up with some 18,000 church web pages which tie
“usher” to Psalm 84:10 - “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house
of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.” Or as my contemporary
translation puts it, “I would rather be an usher at Westmoreland than a
greeter at Walmart!”
So today we give thanks for ushers, and, in a large sense, for all who
act in an ushering role in our lives, making us welcome, pointing us on
the way, tending to the unseen details so that our lives go well.
Teachers are ushers in that sense, opening us to knowledge and
self-discovery. Parents, too, who lead us into life... Even our public
servants and political leaders, the people for whom we will vote this
week, who will write our laws and enforce them, cast a vision for what
kind of country and community we will be, and in that way, usher in the
future.
And let us remember the ways in which we ourselves can be ushers for
others – not just putting them in their place, but recalling that a
definition of usher when used as a verb means “to precede or be a
forerunner of.” In that way, we might even usher in the kingdom or the
realm of God, by acting as if it is already present.
And finally, on this All Saints Sunday, let us remember the parts we
have played when we have sat at the bedside of the dying, and ushered
them into the life eternal. We have held their hands, said a prayer,
told them we love them, and taken them as far as we can, to the door of
the eternal “lovely dwelling place,” and then in faith handed them off
to some unseen angelic mid-wife to escort them the rest of the way of
their pilgrimage, leading them to their seat among the great communion
of the saints. “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!...
No good thing do you withhold from those who walk uprightly...Happy is
everyone who trusts in you.”
Last updated Wednesday, Februrary 29, 2008
1
Westmoreland Circle
Bethesda, MD 20816
301-229-7766
Email the church office: churchinfo@westmorelanducc.org
www.westmorelanducc.org
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Open and Affirming Congregation
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