Hallo again to all.

Last week, we lingered longer than usual in the narthex of our church as we left the building following a bright Easter morning celebration. With the scent of lilies all around us, we shook hands with clergy and fellow parishioners. The longer-than-normal line of people leaving church gave us a chance to read the parish notice board, and to take note for the first time of an invitation that seems the perfect marriage of brevity and wit:

CONSIDER BECOMING AN USHER.
THE VIEW FROM THE BACK OF THE CHURCH IS LOVELY.
THE WORK IS NOT VERY HARD.

We laughed to ourselves, and wondered how long the nondescript sign had been posted without our taking notice. And in the same moment we thought of one of the most memorable lines of Coverdale's Psalter, recited each month on the evening of the sixteenth day:

I had rather be a door-keeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of ungodliness.

The confluence of these snippets of text has been the site of many of our thoughts during this first week of Eastertide. So many of our reflections on church life focus on the course of the liturgical year, the personalities and qualities of clergy living and dead, the excellencies of our hymnody and its practitioners, and the cultural traditions that make Anglicanism Anglicanism.

We've reflected very little until now that none of the foregoing would be possible without the important ministry of ushers—call them sidesmen, doorkeepers, ostiarii, or what you like. The early Church thought them important enough to ordain, and the Church of Rome retained an ordination for porters (along with lectors, exorcists, acolytes, and subdeacons) until the ancient minor orders were suppressed in 1972.

Ushers and sidefolk today carry out their duties quietly and carefully—at the back of the church, where the view is lovely, but also where so many important things take place each day. In some churches, they hand out hymnals and prayer books, or service leaflets. In others, they help a visitor to a pew. Nearly everywhere, they are charged with the high responsibility of collecting offerings of money and food for the sustenance of the community. And they are often the first points of contact between persons in need and the life of a parish, meeting as they do everyone who comes through the door.

This Low Sunday, we pass on what we received with great mirth on Easter Sunday:

CONSIDER BECOMING AN USHER.
THE VIEW FROM THE BACK OF THE CHURCH IS LOVELY.
THE WORK IS NOT VERY HARD.

If you don't care to take on this role in your own parish, at least consider a private and sincere word of thanks to those who do. We're certain they'll have heard such thanks very infrequently before, and that they'll welcome your kind words with surprise.

See you next week.

All of us at Anglicans Online

15 April 2012
http://anglicansonline.org