A few years ago, when knitting was coming back into style, I would walk around and see people wearing beautiful scarves and shawls. My mom had noticed this too. She had learned to knit as a girl and decided to pick it up again. So after consulting the Internet to remember how to cast on, she was off and knitting again.

When I came home on a break from school, I asked my mom if she would teach me how to knit. We sat next to each other with diagrams in front of us to help. I watched my mom knit and imitated what she did – awkwardly holding the needles and yarn. My first attempts were far from the beautiful scarves I had seen others wearing but nevertheless I kept practicing and began to learn this craft.

Once I felt comfortable holding the needles and yarn, I decided on my own to expand my yarn crafting and learn to crochet. I got a book with detailed diagrams and learned, from the book, examples from friends, and by my own mistakes, to crochet. Eric can vouch that there are still many times when I find out I have made a mistake and have to rip out multiple rows and start over again to get the pattern right.

I have read a few books and heard a few interviews recently talking about how people learn the craft of knitting or crochet. The vast majority of writers and people interviewed say they learned to knit or crochet from one of their parents or grandparents. Many of the others say they learned from a friend.

It’s amazing how many things we learn from others. I can remember learning from my sister how to start the lawnmower and from my dad how to ride a bike. Maybe your mom or dad taught you how to cook or how to change a tire or how to swim. Maybe one of your friends helped you learn something else.

In the Great Commission – the label given to the passage from Matthew that we read today – Jesus gives his final instructions to his disciples. He tells them to "go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." Many times we emphasize the first part "make disciples of all nations and baptize them" and forget the second part: "teach them." In Christ’s command a major part of making disciples is teaching them about God as revealed in Christ.

The word for disciple literally means student. So if we are truly to make disciples, then we are to make students hungry for learning about God. Tom Long, in his commentary on this text put it this way: "What the disciples are sent to do is not to hurl gospel leaflets into the wind or hold a rally in a stadium. They are called to the harder, less glamorous, more patient task of making disciples, of building Christian communities."

I have heard of many churches where they talk about the number of souls they have saved. This usually refers to how many people have come forward in a given service to confess Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. But is a simple confession of faith all Christ is commanding his disciples to go for? It seems as though Christ is concerned that those who follow him know more about what they are signing up for – Christ is advocating for Christian Education! If we are truly to be disciples – students – then we must continue to learn.

There is the saying: give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Isn’t that what Christ is calling for here – education? Jesus doesn’t want his disciples just to go out and scare people into confessing faith so they can add another tick mark to their rolls. Christ wants the disciples to take the time to have others understand what following Christ will entail and what Christ has said following him will involve.

As we continue to study portions of Matthew’s gospel from now until Advent, we will come across some of the things Jesus wants those who follow him to know. Many of the things Jesus says are challenging and difficult. Some of them may even seem downright impossible to do or accept. But to truly become a disciple of Christ – a Christian – one must read these words, study them, wrestle with them, and learn their meaning for the life of the individual and the community.

It would have been much faster if my mother had simply made me a scarf and given it to me but then I would not have learned. So many times in the kitchen it is easier for us to do something ourselves than to take the time to teach another. It takes time, determination, and dedication to teach others anything. Likewise, it takes time, determination, and dedication to learn anything.

It would have been much faster if the disciples had simply gone out and said, "this is what happened with Jesus Christ – now believe." But the shallow faith that results from such proselytizing would surely have been cast aside at the slightest threat from the Romans. Such faith would have easily been trampled under the Nazi regime. Such faith would have been squeezed out from the oppressive rule in China.

But instead of simply going and preaching about what they have experienced, the disciples taught as well. They went out and taught about what Jesus had said and done. They wrestled with the questions that came up…and that is how the church was born and continues to thrive.

What attracted me to the Presbyterian Church was the emphasis on education. My fervent hope for the church is to foster the questions that we have, to bring them out into the open, to wrestle with what confuses, over-joys, and enrages us and to do all of this in the community of the church.

Sure, if we take the time to educate, we may not be able to rack up as many people to follow Christ. But for those who take up the task of delving into what Christ has said there awaits the joyful and challenging journey of becoming a disciple of Christ. The mission of the church is not to concentrate on the numbers of souls saved – after all that all rests in God’s hands, but to grow ourselves and others in the knowledge and love of God as revealed in Christ.

Certainly go and baptize but don’t stop there because if you baptize without education then you have a wet child of God welcomed into the community of faith. However, with education – bringing up children and adults in the life of faith – we truly grow the community that Christ envisioned. Though the partnership of baptism and education, we can make disciples.

But lest we get too excited and think the task too large, let’s step back and look at a couple of others God commissioned to go. God told Abraham to leave everything he had known in order to go to a land that God would show him. God told Abraham that he and Sarah would have a child though they were both "getting on in years." Sarah laughed but Isaac came.

From out of a burning bush, God told Moses, wanted for murder, to go back to the place where the wanted posters were still up and meet with the highest authority and say, "Let my people go." Moses threw out every excuse he could think of but God said go. Then, after much hemming and hawing Pharaoh let the Israelites go. But it wasn’t because of the mere actions of Moses that Pharaoh relented; it was because God was with Moses. The great "I am" went with Moses.

Before we get too caught up in the daunting task Christ is calling us to do, let’s read that last sentence again. "Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." Whew! There you have it – we are not in this alone. To go and make disciples – baptizing and teaching – would be impossible without the presence of Christ with us. When we read or study scripture we pray for God’s presence to be with us to assist us in our study and understanding. We are assured by Christ in another place in the gospels that wherever two or three are gathered Christ is in their midst. Without these assurances, the task would be too great, but the seal on the Great Commission is the assurance of Christ’s presence.

As we read last week, with the coming of the Holy Spirit, the disciples are emboldened into action. With the presence of God among them, they are able to begin to teach about what Christ has said and done. With the presence of God among us, we have the ability to truly go out and make disciples – baptizing and teaching – to the ends of the earth.