Righteous are You, O Lord, and right are Your rules. We are small and lowly, but we do not forget Your precepts. Your Word is forever righteous and Your law is true. Your testimonies are righteous forever. Give us understanding that we may live. In Christ we pray. Amen.

I invite you to turn in your Bibles to the Gospel according to Luke, chapter 1. Our plan is to look at the songs of Luke. Whether or not they were songs, they have composition of music, or at least poetry, and so they are often called Mary’s Song, next week Zechariah’s song, and then as we come to Christmas week, we will look at Simeon and then on Christmas Eve, the prophetess Anna.

This morning the famous song of Mary in Luke chapter 1, and let’s, to get to get the context, begin reading at verse 39.

“In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.'”

“And Mary said, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for He has looked on the humble estate of His servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name. And His mercy is for those who fear Him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with His arm; He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has helped His servant Israel, in remembrance of His mercy, as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.’ And Mary remained with her about three months and returned to her home.”

One of the oldest Christian books that we know of, outside of the Bible, is a late first century text called The Didache. That’s Greek for “the teaching.” It’s an anonymous treatise, we don’t know who wrote it, but it appears to be a manual on church order. And that may not sound exciting, but it’s really a very fascinating book.

And it starts like this: “There are two ways, one of life, and one of death, but a great difference between the two ways.” And that begins the famous section in The Didache, the first six chapters, it’s called “The Two Ways.” The section most scholars think was likely used for instruction for baptismal candidates, or for those who were seeking to become members of a church, that perhaps this ancient manual was one of the first things that they used in the early church to help identify if people understood what they were doing when they came forward to be baptized or to join the church, which of these two ways are you on, the one that leads to life, or the one that leads to death.

And we see something very similar here in Mary’s Magnificat. You may know that title and it may say it in your Bible, The Magnificat. That’s simply the Latin word and the Latin vulgate, “My soul magnifies the Lord,” magnifies is the word “magnificat,” and so in music and in tradition, this is often called “Mary’s Magnificat,” her song of magnifying God.

And in it she also sings of these two ways to live. Not so much life and death, though they do lead to life or death,