Sermon-The Final Chapter

Rembrandt, The Death of Jacob, 1640-42

A homily written for a service of Evensong at St Giles-in-the-Fields on Sunday 3rd August 2025 based on the texts of Genesis 50.4-end and 1 Corinthians 14.1-19.

Describing the death of two great figures in Israel’s history, the final chapter of the Book of Genesis is sometimes turned to for lessons in effective end-of-life planning.

Jacob—by then in Egypt—calls his sons to his bedside and addresses each in turn, offering a no-holds-barred assessment of their character and a prophecy about the future of their descendants, who will become the twelve tribes of Israel. He blesses them, gives instructions for his burial and then gives up the ghost.Our first lesson this evening begins with the events that immediately follow Jacob’s death.

Joseph, Jacob’s beloved son—once a slave, now Pharaoh’s right-hand man—moves quickly to honour his father’s wishes. With Pharaoh’s support and financial backing, he arranges forty days of national mourning and a grand procession to Canaan, complete with chariots, horsemen, and a further seven-day funeral rite.

After all the ceremony, Joseph’s brothers are left uneasy. Though he had long ago forgiven them for throwing him into a pit and selling him into slavery, they now fear that, with Jacob gone, Joseph might seek revenge. So they approach him, claiming that their father had asked them to appeal to Joseph for his forgiveness after his death.

Joseph reassures them. His forgiveness stands—and more than that, he sees their actions as part of God’s wider purpose to preserve life - His salvation plan for the people of Israel. We then fast-forward several decades to Joseph’s final days. He offers provision for his brothers and their children, and then, at the end of this final chapter of the Book of Genesis, he too dies.

Behind the splendour of Jacob’s funeral—something few of us could imagine replicating—the narrative offers something much deeper: glimpses of how we might live out our own final chapters.

Drawing together our complicated and sometimes conflicted families, seeking reconciliation and offering blessing; being candid about the loose ends we will leave behind, and honest in our hopes for the future—placing them all into the hands of the One who completes what we cannot.

We see the importance of making our wishes known—where and how we would like to be laid to rest—and of making provision not only for the material needs of those we leave behind, but also for their emotional and spiritual needs, through communal acts of mourning, thanksgiving, and remembrance.

Of course, no single passage from scripture offers a complete model for life—or death. Much is absent from the accounts of Jacob and Joseph’s deaths.

We are told of lingering anxieties and unresolved tensions, but not of the raw grief, disorientation, or numbness that so often accompanies real loss. This silence perhaps as important as the words themselves. The experience of grief can rarely be adequately conveyed by words alone.

In our second lesson, St Paul warns the Corinthian church against unintelligible worship. He urges them to seek clarity, to speak and act in ways that build up the whole community. Speaking in tongues may be spiritually uplifting, he says—he himself is an expert in doing so—but unless the meaning of what is spoken is made clear, such practices miss the communal purpose of worship.

He uses music to make his point. Pipes, harps, and trumpets can make any number of sounds—but it is only when the notes are ordered, when a melody emerges, that others can understand and respond.

And he reminds them that love—charity, in the older translations—is to shape everything. It is that melody of love, communicated clearly and lived openly, that allows the community to flourish; that builds them up.

Last week I officiated at the funeral of a young woman—a student from abroad who died suddenly, without any of the careful planning we see in Genesis. Her parents, brother, and sister were not Christian and spoke no English. Through a translator, they had asked for a Christian service, but without music. They flew in, stayed three days, and returned home with her ashes.

The liturgy was largely unintelligible to them. But the melody of God’s love still found its way through our gestures, our shared silences, and long embraces that carried all the weight that words could not.

I knew nothing of this talented 24-year-old. But standing beside her open coffin, commending her soul to the mercy of God, our lives—so different and incomplete—were all briefly, profoundly knitted together.

And we offered all that was unfinished, unspoken, and unknown to the only One who can hold it fully.

The One who hears the language too deep for words.
The One who, even in silence, sings the final note and completes the story.
The One we are here to worship.

Image : Rembrandt, The Death of Jacob, 1640-42