The Shepherds returned, glorifying and
praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.” (Luke 2:20)
I spent a very interesting six years as a middle school Special Ed teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. I can’t say it all felt like a day at Disneyland. I taught in some rather depressed neighborhoods—neighborhoods dealing with low incomes, gangs, drugs, and teen pregnancy. I also dealt with some pretty troubled kids, as you might imagine. Fortunately, the LAUSD provided me with a formidable consiglieri in the form of my Special Ed assistant, Mrs. Brady[i]. The redoubtable Mrs. B was a veteran educator, and I will confess she taught me pretty much everything I’d ever learn about teaching teens with learning disabilities.
I will always remember one girl in my resource program, Suzy Ramirez. In a classroom filled with outrageous, noisy, and frequently disrespectful youngsters—wanna-be gang-bangers and other assorted seventh grade miscreants—Suzy was a quiet and polite flower among the overgrown weeds and discarded beer cans. I suspect her taciturnity had something to do with English not being her first language, but she was genuinely a sweet kid and I enjoyed having her in class that year.
The following year I was re-assigned to a special day class. Sometime before we broke for Christmas recess I got a call from the office asking if I’d use my prep period to sub for the resource teacher who had taken over my old classroom. Many of the kids in the resource class were my former students, and they were, for the most part, just as crazed as I remembered them being. Suzy sat demurely in the back of the room as she’d always done and gave me a polite smile and wave as I entered classroom. Mrs. Brady greeted me with a silent and foreboding shake of her head.
“So!” said Mrs. B. as I took my seat in the teacher’s desk. “Have you seen your precious Suzy Ramirez?”
Before I could reply, Mrs. B. called, “Suzy, come here and say hello to Mr. Griffiths.”
Suzy stood up and I could see that this lovely, polite, and innocent thirteen-year-old girl was about eight months pregnant.
Suffice it to say I wasn’t exactly delighted by this development. Life is tough enough for kids in that neighborhood without being a child having a child. I don’t remember what I said to Suzy, but I know I prayed for her and her unborn child.
Some weeks later I ran into Mrs. B. in the hallway outside the school office. She was standing with Suzy and Suzy’s mom and she was holding Suzy’s baby and smiling. Suzy was also glowing with pride as she asked me if I wanted to hold the baby. This all happened decades ago and I can’t remember if she had a boy or a girl, but I will never forget the smile on Suzy’s face and the love in her eyes. I knew that, young and unprepared as she was, she was going to be a really good mom. It didn’t matter who or what the father was, Suzy was going to try and give this child the best life possible going forward. She would defy the inconvenience of her circumstances.
There’s something defiant in the spirit of Christmas. It defies our understanding that the Almighty God would condescend to take on our sinful, mortal form. It is astounding and mind-boggling that God would choose a poor peasant girl, no older than Suzy was, to be the bearer of redemption for the whole world. Even more astounding is young Mary’s willingness to defy the conventions of her society and say “yes” to bearing the Savior of the world. It is dumbfounding that her betrothed would similarly defy all the rules and wed a girl who was under suspicion and agree to be a father to a child not his own. It defies our puny expectations that God’s glory should come to us born in a temporary shelter to a homeless family.
Perhaps the most defiant part of this story, as I think about it now, is the defiant joy of the shepherds. These guys were the poorest and lowest in the society. They rushed to see a baby, a helpless baby who could do nothing to change the lives they lived. Many of them may have known they might be dead before this child was old enough to make any kind of difference in their world. Nevertheless, on that night so long ago they glorified and praised God for the hope and the promise they had been given. They defied their circumstances and embraced the joy of God.
If you’re hung up on statistics, there are probably more reasons to be scared, frustrated, and sad this Christmas than there are reasons to be merry. BUT: our one reason for joy outweighs all our other concerns. God has come to be with us, and this is the source of our joy. Joy in the Lord is not simple happiness. Simple happiness comes and goes. Joy is the permanent hope that defies what this world throws at us, and it is joy which our Lord came to give us—joy in our hope, joy in compassion, joy in forgiveness, joy in acts of mercy, and joy in our salvation.
Jesus didn’t have a birth certificate, so we don’t know the exact date when God chose to use an unmarried teen girl to bring divine love into this world. For centuries, however, we’ve chosen to celebrate at the winter solstice, the darkest and coldest time of the year. We’ve chosen to take this frightening, post-harvest, hungry and uncertain season and throw the biggest party ever. We’ve chosen to light all the lights we can and defy the world’s darkness.
May the defiant joy of Christmas fill your hearts with courage, hope and love.
[i]
This isn’t her real name. I’ve changed her name and Suzy’s so I can post this
on the internet.
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