Today we heard a rather long reading from the book of Ruth. This is a pity, because the passage is too long for us to remember, and too short for us to hear the whole story. The story begins with a man from Bethlehem called Elim-elech, who has a wife called Naomi and two sons called Mahlon and Chilion. They moved across the river Jordan to Moab and lived there. Elim-elech died quite soon, but the two young men took Moabite wives, one called Orpah and the other called Ruth and all seemed well. But after ten years, both Mahlon and Chilion died childless and Naomi was left with her daughters in law, Orpah and Ruth. All this happens in the first six verses of the book.

Naomi decided to return to Bethlehem, and Orpah and Ruth decided to go with her. Naomi urged them to go back to their own families, and this is what Orpah did. But Ruth said, "Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die-there will I be buried. May the LORD do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!'

This is the theme of the story. Ruth, the Moabitess, places her life in the hands of Naomi and Naomi's people, but most importantly, she puts her whole life in the hands of God. Her trust is rewarded. Ruth goes from being a widow and a foreigner in Bethlehem to being a wife and mother. Ruth is the grandmother of the great king David and eventually, many hundreds of years later, the fore-mother of Jesus Christ himself. There are only four women mentioned in Jesus' family tree, Mary, Tamar, Rahab and Ruth. The story of Ruth is the story of how trust in God leads to blessings both now and in the future.

In the gospel, Mark tells the story of another woman. Like Ruth she is poor, and like Ruth, she is a widow. And also like Ruth she puts her life in God's hands. But we don't know her name, or where she came from or to whom she was related. We don't even know if she was old or young. We know nothing, except that she was a widow and was very poor.

I guess that is all Jesus knew about her, too, that she was a widow and that she was down to her last two coins. Each of her coins was worth one four-hundredth of a shekel or what we might think of as an eighth of a cent each. They were tiny, too small to bear a legible imprint, no-one but the very poorest people would have used them.

The widow came into the court of the Temple where there were thirteen trumpet-shaped funnels, which were lined along the wall. As they tossed in their offering, the person was expected to say aloud the amount and purpose of the gift in order to be heard by the priest overseeing the collections.

It would have been an impressive sight to see people in fine clothes tossing in large sums, calling out to all how much they gave. In such a group nobody noticed the widow tossing the two smallest coins in the realm into the offering. Nobody, except, of course, Jesus. Jesus notices and calls attention to this act of faith.

"This poor widow", he says, "has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have just given away their spare cash; but she has put in everything she had, all she had to live on."

The text says, "All she had to live on," but the Greek is sharper still. What is really said is that she put in her "bios." It's the word from which we get "biology," the study of life. For Jesus tells us that the widow put her "life" into the temple treasury that day.

The widow is down to two practically worthless little coins, and she trusts it all to God. If this were a gamble, then the widow would be laying all her money on God. But this is not a gamble, for the widow does not bet her money; she trusts her life to God.

It would be nice if Mark filled in more details for us. Was Jesus' arm around the woman as he said, "This poor widow has put in more …" or was the woman blending back into the crowd, never to be seen again? Or perhaps Jesus asked his own keeper of the purse, Judas Iscariot, to give something to this woman so that she would not go hungry that evening. Or better still, did the widow come to be a Christ follower? Did she join with the other women who journeyed with Jesus from Galilee to the cross and beyond?

The Gospel never answers these questions. The nameless widow who gave two small coins fades into the background. We do not know whether she married a rich relative in the same way Ruth married Boaz. We do not know if she died homeless and starving. We don't know if she had any children or grandchildren.

Maybe it is best for us that we don't find out how her story ends. It would be silly if we only trusted God when we knew things were going to get better. The nameless widow reached out to God, not knowing what would become of her. We follow her example when we give God all we have to live on. If we hold back because we don't know what will happen next, we are not trusting God. Ruth did not know that she was going to meet Boaz, she didn't know that her grandson would be King David or that Jesus would be her descendent. The widow did not know her future, we don't know our future, and Jesus, as he journeyed to die in Jerusalem, did not know his future, either.

What Ruth knew; what the widow knew; what Jesus knew; we know too. God can be trusted. If we put our own lives, and the life of our church in God's hands, our future is safe. God's hands are the hands which guided Ruth to Boaz, the hands which raised Jesus from the dead. The poor widow put her whole life in those same hands, and so can we.

Amen