14 Days From Jerusalem to Athens: Follow the Faith as It Crossed Into Europe

We are waiting for you as you land, and we bring you to your hotel to rest. There is nothing to do tonight but arrive, and let it settle in that tomorrow you begin walking the land you have read about all your life.

Your first morning opens on the Mount of Olives, with the whole Old City spread golden below you. You walk down the hillside to the Garden of Gethsemane and stand among olive trees old enough to have been here, where he prayed on the night he was betrayed. People go quiet here. Let them.

The afternoon leaves room to take in the city slowly, letting the reality of where you are settle before the fuller days ahead.

"He withdrew about a stone's throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed." (Luke 22:41)

This morning you walk the Via Dolorosa, the way of the cross, through the living streets of the Old City to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built over both the cross and the tomb. You also come to the Western Wall, where prayers are pressed into ancient stone.

In the afternoon, the quiet green of the Garden Tomb gives your group space to gather and take communion together. This is the day the resurrection stops being a doctrine you affirm and becomes a place you have stood.

"He is not here; he has risen, just as he said." (Matthew 28:6)

A short drive this morning brings you to Bethlehem and the Basilica of the Nativity. You bow low through the Door of Humility and kneel at the holy cave honored without a break since the earliest centuries of the Church as the place where Christ was born. It is smaller and plainer than you imagine. That is the point. Nearby lie the Shepherds' Fields, where the angels first brought the news.

The afternoon allows time to reflect, and to take in a town whose name you have sung your whole life.

"She gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger." (Luke 2:7)

This morning you descend to the Jordan River at Qasr al-Yahud, the traditional place of the baptism of Jesus on the western bank, across from Bethany beyond the Jordan, where many in the group choose to renew their baptismal vows in the water itself. Then to the Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth, where you float without effort. After time to rest by the water, the day winds down in the quiet of the desert.

"As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened." (Matthew 3:16)

This morning you travel north to the Sea of Galilee and sail across the still water by boat, often with the engine cut so you can drift in the quiet. You visit Capernaum, where the ministry was based, and climb the gentle Mount of Beatitudes where the Sermon on the Mount was preached.

Lunch by the shore is the traditional St. Peter's fish. On the water, with the hills all around, the Gospels stop being ancient. He was here, and now so are you.

"Come, follow me, and I will send you out to fish for people." (Matthew 4:19)

This morning you visit Nazareth, where the hidden years unfolded, and the Basilica of the Annunciation, built over the holy grotto where the angel Gabriel brought the good news to the Virgin Mary. There is time to sit quietly with what began here, in an ordinary town.

Having walked the land where the faith was born, you are ready tomorrow to follow the road it took into the wider world.

"He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up." (Luke 4:16)

This morning you leave Israel and fly to Athens, moving from the land of the Gospels to the land where the church first spread into the wider world. You rest tonight in the ancient city where Paul once stood, ready to follow his footsteps in the days ahead.

This morning you climb Mars Hill, the Areopagus, where Paul stood before the thinkers of Athens and preached the God they had marked with an altar to the unknown. Below you spread the Acropolis and the Parthenon. To read Acts 17 while standing on this rock is unforgettable.

Having walked where Jesus walked in the first week, you now stand where the message he brought began its journey to the whole world.

"What you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you." (Acts 17:23)

Today you travel to ancient Corinth, where Paul lived for eighteen months and wrote his letters about love to a struggling young church. You stand at the Bema, the judgment seat where he was brought to trial. The words read at weddings the world over were written for the people who walked these streets.

"Love is patient, love is kind. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes." (1 Corinthians 13:4 to 7)

At Philippi, Paul preached the first Christian sermon on European soil, and Lydia became the first European convert. You visit the river where she was baptized, standing where the gospel first took root in Europe, which is to say, where it first began the journey that would one day reach you.

"The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message." (Acts 16:14)

Today you visit Thessaloniki, where Paul preached and to whose church he wrote two of his warmest letters. You take in the sites of the ancient city and the deep Christian heritage that grew from his work here.

"We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well." (1 Thessalonians 2:8)

Today you travel to Meteora, where ancient monasteries perch impossibly atop towering pillars of rock. For centuries monks climbed here to be alone with God. The sight is unlike anywhere else on earth, and the silence preaches its own sermon, a fitting close to two weeks that carried you across the whole story.

"I lift up my eyes to the mountains. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord." (Psalm 121:1 to 2)

The morning is yours until we take you to the airport. You have walked both halves of the story now, the land where the faith was born and the roads that carried it to the world. Your faith has both a birthplace and a journey home, and you have stood in both.