Dolly Parton died on August 25, 2026, at the age of 80. This sermon puts her beside Joseph.
Joseph’s father made him a coat that marked him out. His brothers stripped it off him, sold him for twenty pieces of silver, and dipped it in goat’s blood. He was enslaved in Egypt, falsely accused, imprisoned for two years — and eventually made steward of all Egypt. When his brothers came begging during the famine, he had every right to destroy them. Instead he told them: “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.” (Genesis 50:20, NRSVUE)
Dolly Parton wrote a song in 1971 about her own coat of many colors — rags her mother stitched together in a house with no electricity or running water. Then she spent the next fifty-five years living the second half of Joseph’s story.
More than 300 million books mailed to children through the Imagination Library. Instruments and uniforms for band programs at historically Black high schools across the South. Relief for Sevier County after the 2016 wildfires. And in 2020, a million dollars to Vanderbilt University that helped fund early-stage research behind the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.
Forbes estimated her net worth around $450 million. Her lifetime giving has been estimated as high as $500 million. She was generous enough to exclude herself from billionaire status — in the same summer America produced its first trillionaire.
This sermon argues that she was a saint. Not a flawless woman — a saint in the sense the hymn means it: “just folk like me,” sinners in need of mercy, who nevertheless showed us what love, acceptance and generosity look like when the public square has forgotten.
Scripture: Genesis 37, Genesis 45, Genesis 50:20 (NRSVUE); Matthew 6:21
With thanks to the Rev. John Roberts, a Presbyterian pastor in Corpus Christi, Texas, whose Facebook post helped me make some of these connections.
