A lesson about instructions

The first time Jesus sent out the disciples, he gave them some pretty specific instructions: Go two by two, take a staff (presumably a shepherd-style staff, not an office staff), but don’t take anything else—no food, no satchel, no money. Wear sandals, but don’t take a change of clothes. When you get to a town, stay in the first house you enter until you leave that town. And if anybody doesn’t welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet on your way out of town.

Strange stuff. Apparently they followed the instructions, and apparently they had a good trip—they drove out a lot of demons and healed a lot of sick people by anointing them with oil.

But why the unusual instructions?

Some people think those instructions should still be followed today. Not many people, thank God, but there are some who prey on unsuspecting generous people, citing this passage as their badge of authority to move in and leech off somebody by masquerading as a "servant of God." Don’t listen to such people—they’re con artists, not evangelists or prophets or whatever else they might call themselves.

So what did Jesus have in mind with these strange rules for this first "disciplic" excursion? Mark is brief, just giving the facts, but not the background. His first readers probably knew what was behind these instructions, but a couple of thousand years down the road we have to piece it together from what we know of the religious and social customs of first century Judea.

Two by two

The command to go two by two might reflect Deuteronomy 17:6 and 19:15, where Israel was taught that at least two witnesses were needed to establish the truth of a matter—in this case, the veracity of Jesus’ ministry.

They were to take no food, satchel or money. It might be that Jesus simply wanted to illustrate the fact that his followers were to trust God for their needs. Or it might be that he wanted to show that his followers were not like certain speakers of the day who traveled into towns with a collection bag to gather money. Or maybe the idea is that they were to travel light to symbolize the urgency of their mission.

Beyond that, it gets pretty murky. They were to take a staff, or walking stick. We could invent a meaning for the walking stick, but it would be our invention. For example, we could say that the disciples would be shepherds of the flock one day, and the staff symbolizes that. But we would be guessing.

Shaking the dust

Why sandals? We’re not told. The shaking of dust from the feet might be easier to understand. According to tradition, when a Jew returned to Judea from visiting a foreign country, he was to shake the dust off his feet, thereby keeping the land unpolluted from the dust of gentile lands. The disciples were to shake the dust off their feet as a witness against any Jewish towns that refused them, maybe symbolizing that such a town was cutting itself off from Israel by refusing Jesus.

Whatever the reasons behind them, these instructions were not intended to be the norm for all mission style work from then on. They were unique instructions for a unique band of men on a unique mission, unique even for them. The commands were specific to that particular mission, and they probably had something to do with presenting a symbolic testimony to Jesus as Messiah, even though we’re not directly told that.

The Bible is full of instructions that we should follow, but it is also full of stories about instructions that were given to particular people for particular reasons in their particular times.

Naaman, an Aramaic general who suffered from leprosy, was told by Elisha the prophet to dip in the Jordan River seven times to cure the disease (2 Kings 5). Should we go jump in the river to heal our skin problems? The Israelites were told to go outside the camp with a shovel to relieve themselves (Deuteronomy 23:12-13). Should we avoid toilets and drive out of town when we need to relieve ourselves?

It’s a good idea to look at the principles behind a particular instruction as a way of helping us determine whether and how to apply that instruction to ourselves in our day. Some biblical instructions might not apply to us at all. Others might need to be applied in ways that are appropriate for our day and circumstances, rather than the specific ways they were applied in biblical stories.

Jesus said that what marks us as his true disciples is that we love one another (John 13:35). Now there’s an instruction that means exactly the same thing today as it did when it was first given. Wouldn’t it be great if we gave that one the most attention?