Have you ever encountered a geographer? I recently met a man who identified himself as one. What does a geographer do? Well, if his life is any indication, lots of things. This gentleman has worked as a journalist in numerous places and once owned a small-town newspaper. He has taught school on an Indian reservation and chaired a Department of Cultural Geography at a university. In short, he lives his life immersing himself into various settings for the sole purpose of understanding the worlds—present and past—of regular people. After conversing with him, I decided that geographers have a religious counterpart. They’re called homilists. Most people associate preaching with doctrinal instruction and knowledge of the Bible, yet knowing "the lay of the land” is equally important. Generic preaching, after all, is anemic preaching. The Word of God does more than echo within our minds and souls, it resounds within forests and stadiums, rumbles like traffic amid sky-scrapers and apartment buildings. It forms farms from the soil of the earth and assembles factories from the labor of workers. As St. John the Apostle explains: “Something we have heard and seen with our own eyes; something we have touched with our hands, the Word, who is life, this is what we preach.” (1 John 1:1) Nothing highlights the impact of geography on preaching as being in a new and unfamiliar place. Such was my experience this past Holy Week while serving at a migrant center in El Paso. Below are a few examples. Upon arriving in the city, a four-lane highway whisked me alongside the border wall dividing downtown El Paso from Juarez. Flashing signs warned drivers to watch for “unexpected pedestrians.” Having driven hours through salt flats and open plains, the barrier’s immense height made a dramatic impression. Its endless, undulating path led me to a crucifixion outside the walls of Jerusalem. Through the gaps between its bars floated the greeting inside the Upper Room: “Peace! Peace be with you!” God’s Word is never “out of place” and preaching like a geographer means paying attention to one’s surroundings. This includes floor plans as well as landscapes. The cramped in-take office at the shelter illustrates the point. New arrivals at the shelter are ushered inside the cluttered room. Seated on folding chairs, adults and children fold their hands and study your face, their own faces weary from weeks in detention centers and months of trekking across deserts, slogging through jungles. Yet, displayed behind them, in festive colors, crayon drawings of flowers, birds, cats and birthday cakes! The sparkling sketches cascade down the brown door like a waterfall of love. Holy Week. Holy Words. Holy Place. Even the arrangement of houses on a city block, like verses on a lectionary page, convey cogent epiphanies. Outside the office window, for instance, sheets and towels flapped warm in the breeze of a courtyard, their soft sound draping the air with thoughts of folded cloth inside an empty tomb. So fluttered the Word of God amid the sights and sounds of this border town. In the book, Discerning the Vernacular Landscape, a prominent geographer, J.B. Jackson writes: “Those of us who undertake to study landscape in a serious way soon come up against a sobering truth: even the simplest landscape contains elements we cannot explain.” His observation, though keen and accurate, overlooks a truth that preachers instinctively know and sense: Every landscape, no matter how simple or fraught, hums with patterns of holiness and hope.