Shake the Dust Off your Feet

"Jesus summoned the Twelve and began to send them out two by two.  He instructed them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick - no food, no sack, no money in their belts. . . He said to them, 'Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave. Whatever place does not welcome you or listen to you, leave there and shake the dust off your feet in testimony against them.'  So they went off and preached repentance." -[ Mark 6: 7-13].


It is said that God never forces Himself on us. God may be insistent, may make His presence known in a pervasive way. But we have Free Will to decide whether we will believe in Him, or not.

Jesus taught His twelve disciples to travel together. Walking life's journey as a Christian is a difficult and even perilous road. My pastor's advice to me was always, "Stay in community." It is not that Christians are to isolate ourselves or remain cliquish only with our own kind. But we do need each other for fellowship, for encouragement, for solace. Being Christian is not a solo trip.

I am struck by Jesus' advice that, "Whatever place does not welcome you or listen to you, leave there and shake the dust off your feet in testimony against them."

It is certainly not Jesus' advice to remain meek and to never speak up. To the contrary, Jesus tells His disciples to "go forth and make disciples of all nations." -[Matthew 28: 19]. There is nowhere in the world that is off limits in our journey to speak and live the Truth.

But, Jesus never says to get in others' faces, to heckle or to scream, to corner and trap, to threaten or publicly shame. Jesus says, "Shake the dust off your feet." In other words, whatever place is hostile or resistant, we are to shake that rejection and unreceptiveness off of our Selves and move on.

There is no prideful belief that simply because we speak the Word more loudly, more forcefully and more often, that we will convince anyone more readily. The responsibility for a person's beliefs lies within himself.

Jesus talks about why He sometimes needs to speak indirectly. It is not because He is a coward or too timid. He says, "This is why I speak to them in parables; 'Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.' " In other words, only some are ready to hear the message of Truth.

I look back on my life as a child. My parents did not ever say they loved me. They did not show me love, or they would have never refused to feed me, or let me be hit and go to school with black eyes. They would never have thought it was fine for me to stop speaking. They did not know how to love.

I suppose I gave up speaking for the same reason that Jesus fell silent on the cross. He was dealing with a heckling crowd that became a restive crowd, that became a murderous crowd. Angry faces going nose to nose turn ugly rapidly, then become murderous violence that can never be reversed.

I may have let my lips stop speaking, but my hands spoke volumes of Love.  Not receiving any Love, I turned to demonstrating what Love is, by showing it in my deeds.

My brother hit me. I knitted him a sweater. My mother told me I was a failure. I weeded her garden, set the table, dried the dishes, helped put away the groceries, mended the clothing. My father took his anger out on me. I sewed him a silk tie. I painted a spare room while he was away on a business trip, so he didn't have to do it when he came home.

No, I was a child, but I was no fool. I taught Love by giving Love. If no one else in that house was going to Love, well, by God and for God, I was going to! If no one else in that house was going to allow me to feel Love, then I would find that Love by creating it.

I also took the long view. I was so young and dependent on my family for shelter and so forth. But I bided my time. When I was thirteen, I was saving every dollar I could earn. I was barely home during those days, except to eat whatever food was offered, and to sleep. By 18, I left home for university and came home rarely. I was shaking the dust off my feet.

Like the disciples, I had to go out into the world with very little, except my Faith.

So often, I thought I was alone, but the ethereal Jesus was beside me all along. Jesus was in the food given to me, the rides offered, the friends who believed in me, the mentors who helped me in school and at work, the encouragement from co-workers, the deep and abiding love of my soul mate and husband.

I was not weak and timid to walk away from hate and abuse. I was courageous enough to understand that I deserved far better, and that I could walk towards that Love with a clear conscience and an open heart.

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