On the Outward Road – Today is communion Sunday, and our senior pastor, Carol Cavin-Dillon, expresses how our communion is an open invitation to everyone, not just to members of our church or our denomination, but to everyone. Today we start working with the book of Acts and its account of the effect of the invitation of Jesus to everyone, not just to Jews and people of Judah and Galilee, as belief and faith spread. Today’s scripture is a story in Acts 8 that concerns Philip, who is not one of the original disciples but who is a Greek speaking convert. In this story, Philip encounters an Ethiopian eunuch who is reading from an Isaiah scroll. As a eunuch, he was likely prevented from being a member of the Temple or even entering the Temple, and here he is heading home, rejected, but reading from Isaiah. Philip is inspired to encounter the Ethiopian and tells the man about Jesus and the open invitation of Jesus. The man asks if he can be baptized, and Philip invites him and baptizes him. This is an early example of God’s expanding table, and it’s an example for our inviting anyone and everyone to the open table of communion and faith. If we, ourselves, ever feel excluded and on the outside, we need to remember the open invitation of God’s grace for joining his kingdom.