15 Days From Egypt to Jerusalem: Walk the Exodus to the Empty Tomb

We welcome you to Cairo, where the Old Testament story begins. There is time to rest tonight before the journey through the land of the Exodus, the land where God first formed a people for himself.

This morning you stand before the Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx, structures already ancient when Abraham walked the earth. To see them is to grasp the age of the world the patriarchs knew.

Through the day you begin to see the Egypt the Israelites knew, a land of both refuge and bondage. The Old Testament begins to breathe.

"I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. So I have come down to rescue them." (Exodus 3:7 to 8)

Today you see the treasures of the pharaohs and walk through the Egypt of both refuge and bondage, the land where Joseph rose to power and where, generations later, a people cried out for rescue. Old Cairo also holds sites remembered in the flight of the Holy Family.

You travel toward the Sinai peninsula, into the wilderness of the wandering, as the green of the Nile gives way to open desert. The landscape itself begins to preach, vast and bare and silent, the country of the forty years.

You come to Saint Catherine's Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai, one of the oldest working monasteries on earth, built around the traditional site of the burning bush. Some rise before dawn to climb the mountain where Moses received the Law, and to watch the sun come up from Sinai is a thing you never forget.

On Sinai, the Ten Commandments stop being a list. They become words spoken on a real mountain you have climbed in the dark, and they carry a weight they never had before.

"Moses led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God." (Exodus 3:1)

You leave Egypt and travel toward Jordan, retracing the very approach the Israelites made toward the Promised Land from the east. Ahead lie Petra and the mountain where Moses would finally look out over the land.

In Jordan you climb Mount Nebo, where Moses stood at the end of his life and looked out over the Promised Land he was not permitted to enter. Standing where he stood, looking at what he longed for and never reached, you understand something about faith and patience that no sermon quite delivers.

"There the Lord showed him the whole land. This is the land I promised." (Deuteronomy 34:1 to 4)

Today belongs to Petra. You walk through the Siq, a narrow canyon over a kilometer long, and at its end the Treasury appears out of the stone, carved by the Nabateans two thousand years ago. There is time to explore this vast rose-red city, a place of pure awe.

"The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer." (Psalm 18:2)

You cross into Israel, entering the Promised Land the way Joshua did, from the east. Having walked from the Egypt of slavery through the wilderness and Petra, you now step into the land the whole story has been moving toward.

You come to the Jordan River, where many renew their baptismal vows, then to the Sea of Galilee. You sail the still water, visit Capernaum, and climb the Mount of Beatitudes where the Sermon on the Mount was preached. A St. Peter's fish lunch by the shore ends the day.

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

You visit Nazareth and the Basilica of the Annunciation, where the angel came to Mary, then travel toward Jerusalem, the city at the heart of the whole journey.

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

A short drive 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. Nearby lie the Shepherds' Fields, where the angels first brought the news.

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

You begin on the Mount of Olives, walk down to Gethsemane, then into the Old City for the Via Dolorosa and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built over both the cross and the tomb.

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

You come to the Garden Tomb, where your group can gather to take communion together. The story that began with a burning bush in Egypt ends here, at a rolled-away stone, and you have walked the whole of it, in order, on the ground. You started in the Egypt of slavery and you end at the tomb of resurrection.

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

We take you to the airport. You have not toured three countries. You have walked the entire arc of redemption, from the Egypt of bondage to the empty tomb, and you carry the whole story home in your body now, not just your memory.