This paper concerns instanton contributions to two-point correlation functions of BerensteinMaldacena-Nastase (BMN) operators in N 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory that vanish in planar perturbation theory. Two-point functions of operators with even numbers of fermionic impurities (dual to R R string states) and with purely scalar impurities (dual to NS NS string states) are considered. This includes mixed R R-NS NS two-point functions. The gauge theory correlation functions are shown to respect BMN scaling and their behavior is found to be in good agreement with the corresponding D-instanton contributions to two-point amplitudes in the maximally supersymmetric IIB plane wave string theory. The string theory calculation also shows a simple dependence of the mass matrix elements on the mode numbers of states with an arbitrary number of impurities, which is difficult to extract from the gauge theory. For completeness, a discussion is also given of the perturbative mixing of two impurity states in the R R and NS NS sectors at the first nonplanar level.