Substitute vicar delivers sermon dressed as bishop killer Lalli

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Markku Suokonautio, who recently took on a temporary vicar’s position at the Lutheran parish of Lapinlahti in the North Savo region, raised eyebrows with his recent sermon in which he appeared dressed as Lalli, the legendary 12th century figure believed to have killed Bishop Henry with an axe.
      In a sermon dedicated to the memory of the bishop, who was credited with spreading Christianity in Finland, Suokonautio came in wearing a fur hat, holding an axe, and carrying a birchbark backpack.
     
Suokonautio, who had worked in Canada as a minister for 30 years, delivered the first part of his sermon with the axe in his hand. Later, he took off the "Lalli costume" and finished the service in ordinary vestments.
      Suokonautio’s superior, Wille Riekkinen, the Bishop of Kuopio, said that he approved of Suokonautio’s use of props to illustrate his point. He said that such unusual methods are permissible, as long as they remain within the bounds of good taste.
      "Nobody has complained to me about it", Riekkinen said on Monday.
      Riekkinen asked Suokonautio to replace Vicar Lauri Jäntti, who is on a leave of absence. Before that, Suokonautio had been, in his own words, "smoked out" of the post of Vicar at the congregation of Uurainen.
      He is to hold the temporary post until mid-April.
     
Suokonautio said that the feedback that he got from his "axe sermon" was positive.
      "With my props I wanted to remind people about Friday’s day of commemoration of St. Henry, and of the farmer Lalli. Perhaps he killed the bishop with an axe because he did not understand the English that Henry spoke", Suokonautio pondered.
      Suokonautio returned to Finland from Canada to take a temporary position in Sukeva in 2004. Since returning to Finland he has listened to sermons of other clergymen in other congregations on his free weekends.
      "Fortunately there are positive exceptions, but most sermons have been completely hopeless in my opinion", Suokonautio says.
      "There is no contact area with the lives of ordinary parishioners. I have not read a sermon from a pulpit for decades."


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Historian says Bishop Henry and Lalli may have been fictional characters (26.4.2005)

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