What is ushering? Most of us think of ushering as welcoming the stranger, seating people, giving directions, and generally being helpful inside a church edifice. Such ushering helps the service run smoothly and efficiently.
Church members often feel it is their duty to usher. But to a Christian Scientist, ushering means and demands much more. Christian Science churches are healing churches. Physical, mental, and moral healings are expected at each service. The ushers play a major role in these healing services. Ushering is far more than a duty; it is a privilege. How can the usher best fulfill his healing mission? By keeping his own thought Christly.
Ushering starts more with what is happening in the usher's consciousness than with what is happening in a church edifice. What is he thinking? Thinking governs and dictates actions. The subjective state determines the outward experience.
To be effective as an usher in church, one must carefully guard his own consciousness. This process starts long before he sets foot inside the edifice. He prepares his thought continually with the Word of Truth through prayer, study, and Christly living. He enters the church with compassion and an expectancy of good through healing. His sense of spiritual reality adds to the healing atmosphere of the church. Proper attitudes of thought are reflected in his behavior. For instance, purity, peace, intelligence, manifest themselves in poised, inconspicuous freedom of movement and in a smiling, joyous alertness to the needs of guests.
From this standpoint ushering is not so much what we do for others as what we spiritually do for ourselves. Or rather, it is what God does through His Christ, Truth, for all of us. God is continually welcoming us into the kingdom of heaven. Where? When? Here and now, within us, within consciousness. True welcome of others, then, is the result of our reflection of purity, grace, harmony, the kingdom of heaven within.
In this light, ushering is healing. It is being loving and knowing the truth of man's perfection in spiritual reality. Such action has a radiating healing effect on all within the compass of our thought. As we yield to and live Love, both to our fellow member in "the household of faith"Gal. 6:10; and to the "stranger that is within thy gates,"Ex. 20:10; our church is a healing church.
When one enters church, he must leave his troubles at the door. He must ever be on guard against intrusions of error. Fearful and critical thoughts if entertained would attempt to produce stilted and other unusherlike actions. One cannot usher correctly and at the same time entertain evil, material thoughts. The Psalmist said, "I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness."Ps. 84:10; The Revelator says of the heavenly Jerusalem, spiritual consciousness, "There shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie."Rev. 21:27; And Mrs. Eddy says: "Stand porter at the door of thought. Admitting only such conclusions as you wish realized in bodily results, you will control yourself harmoniously."Science and Health, p. 392;
When ushering, standing "porter at the door of thought," what do we see as others enter our consciousness? A blind person? A lame or deformed one? An old or young one, a lean or heavy one? A shy or egotistical or sinful one? To be sure, all these need to come to the Christ. Christ Jesus even welcomed publican and sinner. But for what purpose? For healing! He taught that it isn't the whole but the sick that need the physician, the healing Christ, or spiritual idea of sonship.
But what should we see and understandingly welcome in through the door of consciousness? As followers of our Master, we reverse the suppositional error and see the Christ-idea. We behold man as the perfect, sinless idea of infinite Spirit. Isn't that what is meant by being loving, by being Christian? Mrs. Eddy says: "The scientifically Christian explanations of the nature and origin of man destroy all material sense with immortal testimony. This immortal testimony ushers in the spiritual sense of being, which can be obtained in no other way."p. 490;
Here, then, is the great opportunity in ushering—applying metaphysics, just as Jesus did, to correct every error that would appear at the door of consciousness. One can see what this activity does for the usher. It makes him a Christian Scientist. As we learn in prayer to see spiritual man, we see that Church is universal. We can do this anytime, everywhere—in business, in school, in the home. True Church, "whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle"p. 583.—to quote part of Mrs. Eddy's definition of "Church" from the Glossary of Science and Health—permeates every activity and is everywhere impartial, powerful to heal every ill of mankind.
Each time we correct our own thought by destroying the materialistic view and replacing it with the spiritual view of ourselves and others, we come closer to heaven, the kingdom of harmony and perfection within us. Then we see man and woman as immortal, useful, perfect, as well as ageless and unlimited. We see, among the manifold qualities of the image and likeness of God, soundness, completeness, beauty, purity, and freedom. We are ushering in the scientific sense "of the nature and origin of man."
Such consideration of what the privilege of ushering is and what it does for us and others makes us grateful to be ushers. Joyously, carefully, diligently, we fulfill our trust as ushers every moment of the day, each day of every year. What a blessing— what a healing power—for us, our church, our community!
