As you come in to church you walk past our Icon of Mary and the child Jesus.
Underneath it is its title:
heh pantonelpis (·Η ΠΑΝΤΩΝΕΛΠΙΣ); ‘heh’ means the,
‘panton’ means of all, of everything; ‘elpis’ means hope, expectation,
So the icon’s title means ‘The Hope of All’.
Jesus himself, Word Made flesh, God Incarnate,
answers our deepest questions,
fulfils our deepest longings,
brings divine dignity to humanity.
He is ‘The Hope of All’.
In the Church, Advent is, in a special way,
the season of hope, of expectation.
This sense of expectation is expressed in the history of Israel.
That history, and the reflections of Israel’s prophets upon it,
is directed, without them knowing it, towards the coming of Jesus.
The prophets and the psalmists were extravagant in their language:
they often expressed wholly unreasonable,
and seemingly ridiculous, confidence in better times ahead.
They promise that things will change,
that the situation will be put right.
These hopes are met, these promises are fulfilled, in Jesus,
though surely not in the way the prophets themselves were anticipating.
For example, in today’s reading,
Micah writes at the time that Israel is being overrun by the Assyrian empire
and Judah is beleaguered.
The situation is really bad, and will, in due course,
end in the temple being destroyed and the exile to Babylon.
Micah seeks to raise people’s spirits.
He promises a new leader who will:
feed his flock with the power of the Lord,
with the majesty of the name of his God.
No matter what Micah thought he was anticipating,
we recognise these as words fulfilled in Jesus:
for in knowing Jesus, in trusting in Jesus,
we are fed with the power of the Lord,
we are drawn into the very life of God.
In the gospel,
the relatively elderly, heavily pregnant Elizabeth
meets the very young, recently pregnant Mary.
Is this ‘just’ two women coming together to offer each other mutual support?
No; much more is going on.
John the Baptist is the last of the prophets who prepare the ground
for the new revelation of God –
the revelation which is Jesus himself.
Elizabeth is carrying John the Baptist.
They, Elizabeth and her child,
stand for the whole history of the chosen people, up to this point,
with all the hope and expectation of a new order, of a putting right,
with all the trust and confidence that God does have a plan.
Elizabeth speaks in the name of all that hope and expectation.
Elizabeth speaks words of recognition,
recognition that the new order has arrived,
that, through Mary, in the child she is carrying,
the promises are fulfilled.
Elizabeth feels honoured; John the Baptist leaps for joy.
This is more than ‘history’. We are to join in.
Each year at this time, the Church encourages us
to know, in ourselves, in our own hearts,
the longings the prophets address:
the longing for God to be known, the longing for God to be near,
the longing for peace, for justice, for mercy, for meaning.
These longings are answered in Jesus,
he himself is our hope, the hope of all.
So, as we look on the Icon as we leave church,
we join with Elizabeth in feeling honoured,
and with John in primitive joy.
For the Word of God did not cling to his equality with God
but emptied himself, made flesh in Mary’s womb,
that we might be made holy.