Reflection for the 28th Sunday of the Year (Oct 13)
Dr. Elissa Ely recounts this story in a recent column in a newspaper:
She is what our government calls a “displaced person”: someone who has fled her home and cannot safely return. As a teenager, she fled the war in Afghanistan, escaping to Bangladesh. Her brother was killed by the Taliban; her father died of COVID.
She is now studying at a small college in Bangladesh. She struggles through the required courses — including chemistry, a subject she does not love — in order to study the subjects she does love: politics, philosophy, economics. In addition to her course work, she has organized therapeutic writing groups for Afghani students like her: women who have been denied opportunities for higher education in their homeland and are now struggling to make a place for themselves in a strange new place. Her work creates a sense of home for these young women.
She finishes college in a few months. Her dream: to study in the United States for a graduate degree in Foreign Service. She meticulously completes the application process; her paperwork is impeccable. A letter comes from the elite American school she yearns to attend — a school that describes its
mission as “educating service-driven leaders, with a deep understanding of ethical components of global affairs.” She has been accepted.
This is her dream: to be of service to the world.
But the acceptance letter says little about financial aid. Tuition with room and board for the next academic year is almost $87,000 — $87,000 would feed many families in Afghanistan for a long time. There are a few options for assistantships and fellowships, but international students compete with
Americans for those positions. Displaced persons like her do not qualify for federal loans. Borrowing from a private lender can be perilous. So she has been offered a dream — with no help in realizing it. She has been displaced once — and now, financially, has been displaced again.
The question in today’s Gospel is not whether money is good or bad; the Gospel challenge is our sense of responsibility for using the many blessings God has given us for the benefit of all, our willingness to commit of our resources to realize the kingdom of God that we pray for. The experience of this “displaced” Afghani student mirrors the chasm that often exists between what we hope for and our willingness to give what is necessary to realize that hope. Jesus demands more than just a contribution from the rich young man — Jesus asks him and all of us who would be his followers to put aside our own wants and needs, our possessions and status, in order to create places of welcome and support for those “displaced” by poverty, violence and prejudice. Wealth should enable us to live life to the fullest — but too often the prosperity that should enable our journey becomes more important than the journey itself. By God’s grace, may we not become “possessed” by our possessions but embrace the vision of faith to distinguish between the things of our world and the things of God.