Dying was different then.  It was talked about differently.  People talked about being “gathered to my fathers” which meant even in death you were a part of a larger family and you were taught your whole life that even in death you had certain responsibilities toward the family that remained – especially if you were the head of the family.  You prepared for it.  You didn’t avoid it.

“There is one word most doctors hate to say: Dying.

In a recent study of doctors whose patients were dying, only 11% said they personally spoke with their patients about the possibility of death.

Doctors say it can be hard to predict the timing of death. Or that they don’t want to squash hope in a patient and family. Or that they don’t have time for the kind of conversation that must occur when they forecast death.

I learned my husband was “failing to thrive” when I was asked to attend a meeting in a conference room at UCLA’s intensive care unit with five doctors. I had briefly met one doctor; I didn’t know the others. The topic of the meeting, I was informed, was the treatment plan for Mark.

At the conference room meeting, no one actually used the word “dying.” They said they could no longer help him. One doctor advised hospice. I felt like the air had been knocked out of my lungs. No one had hinted previously that my husband’s situation was so dire. Instead, we had been told about people who managed to live years with a brain tumor.

What happened, we wondered. Why didn’t we know Mark was dying until white-coated strangers sitting in a conference room told me? Was it our obstinate desire to cling to every shred of hope in spite of evidence to the contrary?

I don’t think so.

In recent decades, technology has advanced so significantly that the art of diagnosis has changed. Doctors no longer count on in-depth conversations with patients eliciting intimate details about symptoms. Instead, they consult a battery of test results and scans.

And electronic medical records have meant that doctors are often typing their notes as they talk with patients. “The technology has become incredibly complicated,” said one oncologist. “Intangible things get lost, like talking to patients.”

The crunch between technology and communication is most apparent at the end of life. It is reflected, in part, by how we train doctors. In four years of medical school, the average amount of instruction on death and dying is 17 hours.

In 2013, only three of 49 accredited schools of public health offered a course on end-of-life care. Students do not learn more about dying, one report says, because death is a medical failure.

In effect, we have created a medical system that treats death as a separate event having nothing to do with life.”   Nora Zamichow in the Los Angeles Times

Everyone is caught in a web of conflicting expectations and not knowing how to deal with it.

But that was not true in Jacob’s time. The head of the family had spent many hours thinking about the future of his children and the blessing he would give. These were hand-crafted after years of observation and consideration.

The blessing was not always pleasant and it wasn’t always a final “I love you”. It could be harsh or encouraging. It could be long or short. Look at the several blessings here in the 49th chapter of Genesis. “Reuben – you will no longer excel. Simeon and Levi – I will scatter them in Jacob and disperse them in Israel. Issachar is a rawboned donkey.” Try to imagine living with that as your father’s last words to you.

But then there were other blessings: “The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his. Dan will provide justice for his people. Asher’s food will be rich.”

And then we come to Joseph’s blessing. The blessing of the favorite child.

“Joseph is a fruitful vine,
a fruitful vine near a spring,
whose branches climb over a wall.
With bitterness archers attacked him;
they shot at him with hostility.
But his bow remained steady,
his strong arms stayed limber,
because of the hand of the Mighty One of Jacob,
because of the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel,
because of your father’s God, who helps you,
because of the Almighty,  who blesses you
with blessings of the skies above,
blessings of the deep springs below,
blessings of the breast and womb.
Your father’s blessings are greater
than the blessings of the ancient mountains,
than the bounty of the age-old hills.
Let all these rest on the head of Joseph,
on the brow of the prince among his brothers.”

These have been the themes of Joseph’s life. Fruitfulness. Overcoming obstacles. Steadiness. A prince among his brothers.

He is not a prince apart from his brothers but his blessing and assignment is to be a prince among his brothers. The word inheritance comes from a word that originally meant “assignment” – not merely gift. This is Joseph’s inheritance – and responsibility for the balance of his life. In spite of their conniving, hostility, jealousy, fear, dependence and resentment, he is among them. Even in death he stays among his brothers. He does not return to Canaan as Jacob did. His duty goes beyond his own life. For four hundred years his bones remain in Egypt until they are taken with Moses and Joshua back to Canaan.

After Jacob’s death – 17 years after coming to Egypt – it’s clear not much has changed with the brothers.

“When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him?” So they sent word to Joseph, saying, “Your father left these instructions before he died: ‘This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.’ Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father.” When their message came to him, Joseph wept.

His brothers then came and threw themselves down before him. “We are your slaves,” they said.”

Of course, they have always been his slaves in the sense that their lives have been controlled by their hatred, resentment and fear of him.  That’s what happens when the measure of your life is reacting to someone else or comparing yourself to them.  You never live your own life because you are a slave to whatever keeps you tied to them.

Ringo Starr was here last night and if anyone ever had a reason to feel overshadowed it was him. But he wasn’t because he never compared himself to the others. He managed to be grateful for the opportunity. “I didn’t do anything to make it happen apart from saying ‘yes’”.

Joseph’s brothers are good examples of people whose lives are defined by resentment and they accomplish very little as a result. They lived in constant fear of the future and regret of the past. They are immobilized. Their bitterness shrinks them until they are, as C.S. Lewis says, “nearly nothing”.

“A damned soul is nearly nothing: it is shrunk, shut up in itself. Good beats upon the damned incessantly as sound waves beat on the ears of the deaf, but they cannot receive it. Their fists are clenched, their teeth are clenched, their eyes fast shut. First they will not, in the end they cannot, open their hands for gifts, or their mouths for food, or their eyes to see.”

But Joseph’s response to his brothers is as clear a picture of God’s love as any in the Old Testament.

He is not cynical or angry. He is not hardened. In fact, more than anyone else in the Old Testament, he weeps. Six times he weeps over his family. He is overcome with joy and grief and sorrow and gratitude.

He is constantly reassuring them. Don’t be afraid. Harm will not come to you.

He provides for them. He settles them and gives them work that is productive.

He speaks kindly to them.

Even when they betray him he is kind to them.

He is constant and steady.

In spite of our being too often like the brothers, God’s love for us is the same. It is unchangeable and fixed. It is forever and everlasting.

Psalm 100: “For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.”

I think for most of us that is the biggest obstacle in our lives – knowing for certain that we are loved by God. Knowing that we are his people and the sheep of his pasture. God’s love does not fail or falter. And we didn’t do anything to make it happen.

The bones of Joseph were more than a shrine or a relic for the people during their hard years in Egypt. They became a symbol of hope and looking forward to deliverance. They were not only a reminder of better times in the past but an assurance that God, while silent, had not abandoned them.   That is why Joseph’s story is so prominent in Genesis. He represents the best.

Bones are what holds us together. I’ve thought about what held Joseph’s life together and how we can learn from his the bones of his life.

First, responsibility was the theme of his life. He took his duties and opportunities seriously no matter the circumstances. Wherever Joseph served people came to the conclusion that there was no need for concern because his integrity was without question. You could depend on him.

Second, he valued relationships of commitment and respect. What did he say when Potipher’s wife tried to seduce him? “My master has withheld nothing from me…How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God.” Later, Pharaoh says, “I am Pharaoh, but without your word no one will lift a hand or foot in all of Egypt.” Then, in spite of their mistreatment of him Jacob takes care of his brothers to the end of his life.

Third, he rested in God’s purpose for his life. He did not panic. He had a genuine and unshakable sense of God’s hand in his life. What does he say to his brothers? “And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.”

After Jacob’s death he says again, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

The same word (cashab) used to describe the brother’s conniving and conspiring to harm Jacob is the word for weaving. In other words, God wove their conspiracy for evil into the fabric of Joseph’s life. “What you plotted God has woven into my life for a reason – to save not only you but many lives.”

I like his reason for naming his second son Ephraim because, he says, “God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering.” No matter the circumstances or obstacles his life was fruitful and productive.

Finally, he was in control of his ego because he and everyone around him understood his success came from God. Even Pharaoh understood that it was the spirit of God that guided Joseph. But time and again Joseph says “this is not me but God”. God has made me what I am and has given me this position. Even Jacob recognized that it was “because of the hand of the Mighty One…the Almighty who blesses you”. Joseph’s life was guided by God.

But while he did not become proud, he also was not apologetic for his advantages. He accepted and used the gifts and privileges he had been given. He carried honor and position naturally.

Privilege is a word you will hear often on college campuses today. In fact, there are courses in how to overcome the burden of your privilege as the children of elites. Privilege is defined as those things you did not earn and you take for granted. It is the unexamined and unquestioned assumptions we make about ourselves and others. While it is true it is also becoming a source of guilt and shame and silly exercises in trying to eliminate privilege in your life.

Joseph had certain advantages but he did not shrink from them. He did not deny them or try to make them invisible. In fact, he was absolutely honest about them. He says to Potiphar’s wife, “No one is greater in this house than I am.” Years later he says to his brothers, “Now hurry back to my father and tell him that God has made me lord of all Egypt.” That is the difference between someone who is handicapped by their advantages or someone who uses them to advance themselves and the person who recognizes them and gets on with being productive. Jacob was not like George Herbert, the English pastor, who was dissatisfied with his low position and longed for more recognition but came gradually to see the danger in wanting a higher place.

Were it not better to bestow
Some place and power on me?
Then should thy praises with me grow,
And share in my degree.
How know I, if thou shouldst me raise,
That I should then raise thee?
Perhaps great places and thy praise
Do not so well agree.

But neither was he like those who in Screwtape Proposes A Toast who would force everyone to be equal and to resent differences.

“What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence – moral, cultural, social, or intellectual.  You remember how one of the Greek Dictators (they called them “tyrants” then) sent an envoy to another Dictator to ask his advice about the principles of government. The second Dictator led the envoy into a field of grain, and there he snicked off with his cane the top of every stalk that rose an inch or so above the general level. The moral was plain. Allow no preeminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser or better or more famous or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level: all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. But now, no one need go through the field with a cane. The little stalks will now of themselves bite the tops off the big ones. The big ones are beginning to bite off their own in their desire to be equal.”

These are good bones to build your life on and to leave behind:

Responsibility and unquestioned integrity.

Relationships of commitment and respect.

Resting in God’s purpose for your life.

Realizing God’s gifts and making use of them.

These are bones we can use to bless our own children and the people with whom we live and work.