Mark 6:11
I try to keep my house clean. When people come over that seem dirty, I even try to point them in the direction of the chair I don’t care so much about. That way the couches don’t get messed up. Maybe you can say I’m a clean freak, but I value my stuff. I’ve worked hard for it, and I probably won’t be getting anything newer for quite some time. So to keep things nice, I make sure the dirt stays outside.
Sometimes after working out I come in and am sweaty, so I sit on the floor. I know what you’re thinking, “a house is meant to live in.” Well, I live in mine, but I like my house to always be visitor ready (Oh gosh, I think I turned into my mom). That’s why if a visitor is dirty, I may ask that person to kick the dust off their feet before walking in my house!
I’ve been in houses before though that seemed like outside the house was cleaner than inside the house. These are typically old men’s homes. A fishing buddy of mine who lives in North Carolina has an extremely dirty house. It kind of grosses me out really. I literally have walked outside his house and cleaned my shoes.
When Jesus sent the disciples out to teach about Him, He told them to shake the dust off their feet if people didn’t accept them (Mark 6:11). Basically, this was to be a vivid sign that they wished to remain separate from people who rejected the message of Jesus they were proclaiming. So, to show that they wanted to be different from the people they met with, they were to kick the dust off their feet.
I love my old fishing buddy back home, but when I leave his house I don’t want to smell like an old dirty home. I want to smell, in the words of Outkast, “so fresh and so clean.”
But all this makes me think about what people walk away with when they have hung out with me. I don’t smoke so I know they can’t smell like cigarettes and I don’t keep a dirty house so I know they can’t smell like dirty laundry, etc., but do they walk away and think that they want to separate themselves from me? Do I act in such a way that they no longer want to communicate with me? Do I give in too quickly for them to believe I don’t stand for what I say I stand on?
This truly makes living the Christian life a little harder than many of us like to let on. Especially when we are called to stand on our faith yet love everyone. I’ve heard it said this way before too – “ to love the sinner, yet hate the sin.”
I wonder if the disciples ever walked away from people at times and as they brushed the dust off their feet say, “I sure loved those people.” I wonder if some of the towns and communities the disciples went to were church communities like some of ours who didn’t want to hear the truth about what it means to follow Jesus. I wonder if some of the homes the disciples went into had the Torah (their Bible at the time) on the table by their bed and talked like a Christ follower, yet rejected the truth proclaimed. I wonder if we have become the very people the disciples kicked the dust off their feet to.