NOTES for Mat 10:9-15
Sending His disciples out to preach, Jesus tells them something very important about how they must carry their witness to the Kingdom. Above all, He requires from them what some contemporary Christians call a "consecrated life." This is apparently how we should understand the Savior's words about gold and silver in their belts, as well as about clothing, footwear, and a staff. All these things were absolutely necessary on the road, but in the Temple they were not only inappropriate; they were directly forbidden. Those approaching the altar were not to have shoes or outer clothing; during the sacrifice they were not to have money with them, and in their hands they were not to have either a traveling bag ("a bag for the road") or a traveler's staff.
In this way Jesus, as we can see, wants to tell the apostles that throughout their witness they must live as if they were standing in the Temple court by the altar. This is no surprise: one can bear adequate witness to the Kingdom only when one lives by its life, and one can preserve the life of the Kingdom within oneself and not lose it only by preserving that state of inward standing before God that belongs to a person approaching the altar.
As for their attitude toward the people they meet on the way, Jesus advises His disciples to keep things simple: choose a worthy, as we would say today, respectable, house and stay there if they are received, without regard to persons and without looking at which religious party the host belongs to. One can and must bear witness to the Kingdom to everyone. Religious differences and theological subtleties have no significance here, and therefore there is no need to pay much attention to these questions by carefully asking, as the Pharisees often did, whether the owner of the house they had entered belonged to their own brotherhood or to some other one. The only reason to leave a house or even a city is the rejection of the witness, and then one must leave at once and decisively: compromises in what matters most are impossible, and where there is no one to listen, a witness has nothing to do. Otherwise, if one simply lives there while forgetting the main thing, one will have to forget the consecrated life. And then one will also have to forget the Kingdom to which Jesus called the apostles to bear witness.