Genesis 50 and Joseph's Bones

The Rev. Megan Collins

Sunday, August 30, 2026

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This is our final week in Genesis. (We made it! Good work, everyone!) 

We have spent 21 weeks unpacking and studying and wrestling with these ancient texts together. We started in Genesis 1 with an ancient dark watery chaos, then we followed generations of people trying to live together and (at least some of them) trying to follow God, and now we are here, in the final chapter. 

And in the very last chapter, Genesis has one more story to tell.

Genesis 50:22-26 

²² So Joseph remained in Egypt, he and his father’s household, and Joseph lived one hundred ten years. ²³ Joseph saw Ephraim’s children of the third generation; the children of Machir son of Manasseh were also born on Joseph’s knees.

²⁴ Then Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die…”

Joseph has lived a full life, and now he knows his time is short, so he starts making end of life plans. 

Dave and I went to a funeral with our son a couple of weeks ago and afterward we were sitting around with our family chatting about all the things that you talk about after a funeral. We started discussing end of life planning, and what each of us wants for our own funerals. (I personally think I want my cremains to be put into a firework. Did you know that’s a thing? So that at the end of my funeral, it’s fireworks. My family isn’t totally on board yet). 

Maybe you’ve thought about these things, and not just about the final memorial service (and perhaps a firework show) but also what you will be remembered for. 

Joseph is doing this too.  For Joseph, if we were writing his obituary, it could be a great one. There’s no way it would come close to fitting on the back of a funeral bulletin or in the newspaper. Think of all the successes he had - rose from slavery to being the second in command in Egypt, a trusted household manager, interpreter of dreams for the Pharoah, designed and Executed a nationwide grain storage plan to get Egypt through seven years of famine. It's impressive.Joseph was so accomplished he could have asked for just about anything at the end of his life, a big statue, a monument in Egypt for people to come celebrate him every year, a huge processional. 

But Joseph has other plans for his funeral. 

Joseph is still the dreamer, and he wants his people to dream too. 

He doesn’t want them to focus on what he did in the past. He wants to keep their focus on what God will do next. He wants them to hold onto the promise God made to Abraham, to look toward a better day he believes is still coming. 

Perhaps the great, late, Dolly Parton, could best put to words what Joseph wants here. I know for some, losing Dolly this week was a hard one. Her list of accomplishments and awards is one that would rival even Joseph’s. But perhaps her real legacy, the one people keep talking about this week, is the work she did for the community, and the hope she gave to people that things could get better.  She wrote a song called "Clear Blue Morning", and I think it captures Joseph’s perspective here. She wrote:

It's been a long dark night

And I've been a-waiting for the morning

It's been a long hard fight

But I see a brand new day dawning

I've been looking for the sunshine

You know I ain't seen it in so long

But everything's gonna work out just fine

And everything's gonna be all right

That's been all wrong

'Cause I can see the light of a clear blue morning

I can see the light of a brand new day

Today we are going to talk today about legacy, and hope, and how Joseph’s very strange funeral plans pointed to a new day dawning for the Israelites. As Joseph goes on to give more specifics about his burial plans, he says this:

“I am about to die, but God will surely come to you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” ²⁵ So Joseph made the Israelites swear, saying, “When God comes to you, you shall carry up my bones from here.” ²⁶ And Joseph died, being one hundred ten years old; he was embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt.

Joseph makes them swear that they will carry his bones with them until God takes them to the land promised to Abraham. Joseph makes his final act pointing them to the promise God has made. My bones will stay with you as a constant, physical reminder to hold onto that future God is building. 

It’s a powerful legacy. 

But practically, it is not a small request. He is asking for a lot more than fireworks. Joseph was embalmed in Egypt, so he is essentially a mummy. They will now have to keep this mummy/sarcophagus with them indefinitely.  Then later in Exodus, which we’ll get into next time, after Joseph has died, the Israelites have been suffering under the oppression of the Egyptians. The time finally comes for their dramatic escape. They are preparing to fight for their lives as they flee. They are running frantically around, gathering anything they can to help them survive.

Then Moses remembers . . . .Joseph’s bones. He wanted them to take his bones with them. He made the Israelites swear that they would.  “Hold on guys. We have to go get Joseph.” 

Exodus goes on:

¹⁹ And Moses took with him the bones of Joseph, who had required a solemn oath of the Israelites, saying, “God will surely come to you, and then you must carry my bones with you from here.” ²⁰ They set out from Succoth and camped at Etham, on the edge of the wilderness.

Moses goes and gets Joseph’s remains. 

And it’s a bit . . .inconvenient . . . to have to carry it while running for your life. 

Can you imagine, as they are being pursued by the angry Egyptians, not sure if they will get out alive, but then they look over at Joseph? Inconvenient, for sure. But Joseph was so sure that they would make it.  He had so much faith. He seemed to just know that everything’s gonna be alright. Maybe it helped them keep going, because his faith helped them have faith too. 

They do make it out alive, and then for years, they wander, in the wilderness, still lugging around Joseph with them. Wander, set up camp, make a campfire, hang out with Joseph’s bones. He had to have become this cumbersome, awkward but powerful symbol that God’s promise to Abraham would come to pass. It’s not mentioned that Joseph’s bones are with them,, but we know he was there, because finally in Joshua 24:32, they mention him again: 

“The bones of Joseph, which the Israelites had brought up from Egypt, were buried at Shechem.”

Remember Schechem back in Genesis 12?

12 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.  ^{. . .}  ,⁶ Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. ⁷ Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.”

Schechem was the place where Abraham originally received the promise of God. Now, finally, that promise is complete, and Joseph can be laid to rest. It’s the end of Joseph’s story. But he will be mentioned one more time in the Bible. There is a letter to the Hebrews all the way forward in the New Testament. Hebrews 11 lists all these unbelievable acts of faith people had done, people like Abraham and Moses.

They are people who, Hebrews says , often “¹³ died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them.” These were people who believed in God so much that even if they didn’t see it come to pass, they knew God would do what God had promised. Joseph did that too. He is listed in Hebrews 11 alongside these other giants of the faith, and the reason it gives is not his work during the famine to save everyone or resisting Potiphar’s wife or even his courage when his brothers threw him in the pit. It says:

Hebrews 11: ²² By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave instructions about his burial.

Of all of the things Joseph did in his life, all the amazing accomplishments we could remember about him, it was his funeral planning that Hebrews mentions. His bones become his legacy. Joseph didn’t seem to care if his success was remembered after he was gone. But he was insistent that his people kept going, kept moving forward, because Joseph believed in the future God had in store. 

So now let’s talk about you. 

Some of you are lucky enough to have a Joseph in your history, someone who cared more about your future than about being remembered for their own success. A lot of people live well, but not everyone dies well. So if you have someone like that, it’s a gift. There was a younger woman I had the privilege to know for several years. She had a cancer diagnosis that was horribly quick and unfair. It became clear that time was short. It would have been completely understandable for her to focus on her own life, on the things she hadn’t done yet. Or she could have tried to at least memorialize the things she had, the success and things she had accomplished. 

But instead, she thoughts about the future for her husband and her two young adult sons. She helped them sell their house and move to a place better suited for their next chapter, without her. It couldn't fix their grief. She knew that. But it was one thing she could do, to show just how much she believed in hope, in what was next for them.  

Some of you are lucky enough to have those people, those Josephs, in your life. 

But all of us have the opportunity to be one, for someone else.

Matt Astone shared a quote from Dolly Parton with me earlier this week. She said:

“We can’t just hope for a brighter day, we have to work for a brighter day. Love too often gets buried in a world of hurt and fear. And we have to work to dig it out so we can share it with our family, our friends, and our neighbors.”

What could you be doing to work for a brighter day, even if you don’t get to see it? 

What could you do to be remembered not for what you accomplished, but for what you believe is possible for the ones coming after you? 

What would it look like to not be people who build monuments to ourselves, but instead to live in such a way that, at our funeral, they say something like what I imagine they said at Joseph’s: “he insisted that I have hope for the future.” 

At every funeral we officiate here at the church, we say a similar prayer. And this may sound strange, but I love this prayer. Because if we really lived this way, it would change everything. Living like Joseph starts with deciding to have a perspective that goes beyond our years here.

We acknowledge the uncertainty of our life on earth, and ask that you teach us to number our days. 

Help us, O God, to live as those who are prepared to die  and when our days here are ended, enable us to die as those who go forth to live,  so that living or dying our life may be in you. 

Help us to believe where we have not seen give us the faith to trust that you are here with us.

We know that even when we do not see you, you are still at work, loving us and calling us to you. 

What would it change, if this were true for you? Because (and we might have to add Dolly’s words to our prayer from now on) it's been a long hard fight . . .

For Joseph

For Dolly

For you, and 

For those who have gone before you,

For those who will live after your gone,

But we can see the light of a clear blue morning,

So we have every reason to hope.