Theme: The life of faith, begun in baptism, remains alive if we stay close to Christ. Christ is the vine and we are the branches.

COMMENTARY

Epistle: Acts 8:26-40
Philip is instructed by an angel to go to the road that leads from Jerusalem past Gaza down to Egypt. On the road he encounters an Ethiopian official, the steward of the queen's treasury. He is traveling along in a chariot and reading the Old Testament, Isaiah 53. He was either a proselyte of the Jewish faith, one who was circumcised and accepted the whole of Jewish law, or he was a God-fearer, which means that he wasn't circumcised or baptized but he read the Hebrew scriptures and adhered to the moral principles of the Jewish religion. Philip runs up alongside the chariot and asks the official if he knows what he is reading. T…