The most special, sacred "workplace" in the world, the place of service is the church pulpit. The greatest honor for an earthly mortal is to be able to stand up in the nearly 2,000-year-old "workplace", on the pulpit of one of the many millions. And you can join the line in which many preachers, confessors, martyrs, happy priests and pastors have served, and you can proclaim the life-healing Words that are always true.

The pulpit is an exceptional place. There, the eternal message is spoken publicly and to each person in their own language. German confessional pastor Martin Niemöller wrote: The masters of the world come and go. Our Lord comes and stays. The pulpit is the place where this unique Advent fact becomes verbally public. Everywhere, anytime.

Advent workplace during Holy Week and Easter, during and during all church holidays. The great King is coming, the pulpit announces. And also that you come to your senses, repent, because "the ax has now been laid at the root of the trees" (Matthew 3:10 - Károli).

This Advent, I come to you in number, Lord. You have graciously allowed me to stand in the pulpit of more than 100 churches with holy fear, yet with a happy heart, more than three thousand times for 50 years. Every pulpit is memorable, but there were also special ones. At home, in the motherland, in the separated parts, in Europe and further afield. Before December 5, 2004, and even more so as a silent protest after. I tell you my fragmentary account from the pulpit in the faith, Lord, that you will hear the magnificat, the glory and the hallelujah of my grateful heart.

There are such things in the life of every service person. My first place of service was the pulpit on Kálvin tér in Budapest, in the spring of 1970. As a theologian, as part of a mandatory homiletical exercise, I had to deliver my exam sermon there to classmates, acquaintances and the professor of preaching at the time, dr. in front of Géza Szabó. Where are the other nine? – he is the only one among the ten healed lepers, a Samaritan, who goes back to Jesus and thanks him for his healing.

the entire article from Felvidek here.

Photo: Dr. Lajos Békefy/Felvidék.ma