The Gospel According to My Bearded Dragon

Sermon for April 28, 2024, written for Lakewood Presbyterian Church

Acts 8:26-40
8:26 Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza." (This is a wilderness road.) 8:27 So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship 8:28 and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. 8:29 Then the Spirit said to Philip, "Go over to this chariot and join it." 8:30 So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" 8:31 He replied, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. 8:32 Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this: "Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. 8:33 In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth." 8:34 The eunuch asked Philip, "About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?" 8:35 Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. 8:36 As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, "Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?" 8:38 He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. 8:39 When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. 8:40 But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.

John 15:1-8
15:1 "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. 15:2 He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. 15:3 You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. 15:4 Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 15:5 I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. 15:6 Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 15:7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 15:8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.

Lord we look for you, and we welcome you! We know You are here already, reveal your goodness and abundant love to us today. Remind us that you are all around us in your world — you come to us in unexpected ways and you use us as unexpected messengers. Remind us that you are still speaking. As we listen to your Word today, whatever builds up, may we remember. Whatever tears down, may we forget. Amen.

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Photo taken by me (Addie Domske) of Tina Fey the Bearded Dragon enjoying our yard, 2023

So today, we have a very small update in the grand scheme of things, but big for our family: this week, our beloved pet bearded dragon died. Her name was Tina Fey the bearded dragon and she was a great pet! She had been slower than usual (for a reptile) since we moved to Washington, and she was within the lifespan of a beardie, but we were still shocked. When I look at the scheme of terrible things happening in the world, I see death and violence all around me. I’ve done two funerals in the first three weeks of my new job here. Loss is constant. Grief abounds. And so today, as we reflect on this early story from Acts about an unlikely early Christian, and from John about the ways in which Jesus molds us into healthy, reliant community members, I want to share a little about the grief process for our family losing a pet this week.

It is an incredible experience to share space with animals. Tina was with us for seven years and beloved by all. She has always been our nicest pet. We procured her for our Southside apartment in Chicago as a little tiny lizard, and she lived with us until we moved to Chicago, where we—and this is not a lie—used a service called Ship Your Reptiles to ship her and our two turtles across the country to California. She was the best Game of Thrones mascot a fan could ask for, and she was featured in the funniest church directory photo ever where we got our pictures taken with the cat and the lizard, and at the end of our session, the photography asked—like they do when you have kids—if we wanted a picture of the pets alone. We had to say, “No, sir, if we leave the cat with the lizard…the cat will eat the lizard.”

Tina drove shotgun with me in the car from California to Washington, relaxing on a heating pad, as we moved here with a car full of animals and now a new baby named Sagan. And Tina is to date the only animal we lived with that Sagan actually learned the name of. We hope she liked us. We liked her a lot. 

Now, the reason I am bringing up Tina today is because of the story in Acts. Philip is the early church leader we see in Acts. And in this story, we see him being taught by a member of his flock—we see the Ethiopian as a curious minister to Philip in their exchange. An angel tells Philip to go to the wilderness, there he means an Ethiopian eunuch—today this person might opt to be called a Black, gender non-conforming person—who had come from Ethiopia to worship. The eunuch is reading from the prophet Isaiah and asks for an interpretation of Scripture from Philip—basically he asked Philip for a sermon! And Philip interprets Scripture and shares the good news…and then the eunuch sees water and amazingly asks to be baptized right there. It’s an immediate conversion story. But it’s not a story about Philip being such a great pastor that he bore great fruit—it’s a story about a listener to the gospel, just a regular church attendee, taking the gospel seriously. The Ethiopian eunuch immediately got the practice of the religion—no one needed to tell him how to live it out once he had been given the good news.

So this brings me back to Tina, and how Dan and I as parents are just rookies, so we’re always learning on the job how to be good parents. So Tina dies—Tina, who lives in our living room, who we say hello to every day, who Sagan knows by name. And we decide to do our best at processing pet death with a toddler.

We involved Sagan in the death care work. We figure, kids like Sagan have not yet learned that adults think death is scary. They can handle it!

So we showed Sagan Tina in her tank, we wrapped her up together in a white t-shirt, and together, we carried her outside to a hole Dan had prepared.

Now you should know, Sagan is really into flowers right now, so while outside, Sagan watched Tina move from the tank to the hole, and when she gets there, we say how now she will live here. And Sagan asks to give Tina a flower.

I replied, “yes, she would like that!" and Sagan put one on top of her little covered body, we all covered her with dirt, and we planted a new magnolia tree overtop of her. Dan and I think this is the end of the story.

But later, while playing in the yard later Sagan comes up to me, holding another flower, and says “Tina!” and points to the tree, so we went back to the tree and I explained that we give gifts for Tina to the tree now. So Sagan laid his flower at the base of the tree.

The next day, when Sagan left for daycare in the morning Dan told me that Sagan pointed to the tree and said, “Tina!”

Sagan has done that everyday since.

Now, I know that Sagan doesn’t understand death. And yet. This whole thing made me thing of the Ethiopian eunuch, and how he got it. He didn’t have to have all the context like a seminary degree or field study experience and years serving as elder. He heard the gospel and he wanted to be baptized. Sagan practiced death ritual with us and got somehow that this thing that had been ever present in their life, every single day, had moved into a new realm — a realm where we could no longer pet her or see her, but where we could most definitely give her flowers. So this story happened to me this week, this story from Acts. I thought of Acts this week—I thought of how prophets and preachers and ministers are all around us, and most of them are not the pastor up front—this week the little minister in my life was Sagan, who knew just want to do when their pet lizard died.

And I thought of the story from John. In John, we get this beautiful image of new growth. A good tender of plants knows that it is healthy to remove certain parts of a plant to allow it to grow bigger and stronger. In this passage from John, we see God as the gardener and Jesus as the vine. We are the branches grafted onto Jesus’ foundation, and through that we are made strong and made new. The power of this growth image reminds me of the power of a little flower cast down into the grave of a bearded dragon, to enrich and enliven the roots of a growing magnolia tree. A tree that is made stronger by that foundation. But also an alive thing that has experienced loss and has had important parts cut back—and has known the experience of pruning as both difficult and open to possibility.

I wonder if you feel any resonance with these early church stories in your lives today? Are there ordinary prophets and pastors around you who get the right thing to do when they see opportunities for new life in the world? Are there parts of you that you feel have been pruned, but where you can tell new growth will soon occur?

"Look, here is water!" What is to prevent us from doing the work of baptism in the world today? What is to prevent us from saying yes to unlikely invitations, to craft on branches of new things in our world, to build onto our foundations a new branch of how to be Jesus’ people in the world. Go into the world like the Ethiopian eunuch, like a well-supported bud reaching for the sun, like a little kid teaching love to the world. Prophets and preachers and ministers are all around you. You are those people in the world. You need no more formal training than to have heard the gospel and believe it. 

May it be so.

Amen.