I believe you, Kosta, its simply not part of my experience. By the way, the only time I've seen a pulpit used in an Orthodox Church is by a bishop or when the priest has been instructed to read some sort of hierarchial encyclical. Otherwise the priest always speaks in front of the Royal Doors or on the solea.
Yes, the baoloque-style Saborna Church in Belgrade, across from the Patriarchy, has a pulpit on the left side, similar to those found in Roman Catholic churches, but that would be used, as you said, for reading of encyclicals or the likes.
Most Serbian churchs in Patrida do not have pulpits.
Our Greek parish always had the homily after the end of the Divine Liturgy. The in-laws' Greek parish had a lengthy sermon after the Gospel (and from the elevated pulpit), but the priest was not Greek but Romanian, and was working on his doctorate. :-(
It is pretty common in parishes that use the St. Tikhon's Divine Liturgy book to have sermons after the Gospel, because that book is the only Orthodox service book I have ever seen that actually has the words "Sermon" in it, and it is after the Gospel reading. I would imagine that given the OCA history, this is a Uniate influence, but I don't know that for a fact.
That book is also very odd for a number of reasons. For one thing, it is the only service book in existence that combines all of the Priest's portions as well as all of the portions to be chanted by the psalti/choir.
It is the only such hybrid book in existence as far as I know. What is traditional is for the priest to have a Priest's Service Book (Hieratikon/Sluzhebnik) with all of the texts and rubrics that he needs to serve, and for the chanters to have their Horologion/Chazoslav with all of the parts that they need to chant the psalmody, hymnody, and responses. The people in the congregation, if they had anything at all, would have prayer books that contained the common, fixed portions of the service done by the chanters.
Neither book has anything of the other that isn't necessary -- so for instance, the Sluzhebnik will be very lengthy on the Divine Liturgy, starting from vesting prayers through the Proskomede through the entire Liturgy. The Horologion will be much shorter. On the other hand, services like Midnight Office, the Hours, and Compline will each take up perhaps a page or less in the Sluzhebnik, but many pages in the Horologion, since these are primarily done by the chanters, with very little done by the priest.
Also, because of the St. Tikhon's book having all of the priest's portions, the bad habit of the priest reading all of the silent prayers out loud and having the people do the deacon's responses at the epiklesis has arisen (with the encouragement of the late Fr. Schmemann).
And it uses the very odd RSV convention of using thee/thou for God and you/you for everyone else, something that makes no grammatical sense whatsoever. It should be thee/thou for all second person singular and ye/you for second person plural, just as there is the distinction in Greek and Slavonic.
Anyway, our bishop is trying to root out the St. Tikhon's book and replace it with more traditional books (Abp. Dimitri's translation of the Hieratikon and the Jordanville Unabbreviated Horologion.) But I'm afraid that that little St. Tikhon's book has introduced a number of bad habits. At the time it came out, it was the best and most usable English language book available, so I don't mean to be ungrateful, but its time has passed...
Anyway, the influence of the St. Tikhon's book plus the general Western influence is my theory on why sermons after the Gospel are common in the OCA and amongst the Antiochians, who also used the St. Tikhon's book a lot over the years.
Given the realities of modern Orthodox life, where Matins is very poorly attended compared to Liturgy (and often not served at all), having a sermon after the end of the Divine Liturgy is probably the place that makes the most sense, if we must have one at all.