The name Traveling Tabernacles evokes the Tabernacle for the Holy of Holies that the Israelites carried with them during the years of the Exodus. They set up the Tabernacle, protected by a surrounding enclosure, at each of their stopping places on the long pilgrimage from the land of their enslavement to the land promised by God.

As artist Gay Cox writes:

From the desert tabernacle of the nomadic Israelites to the “temple of the Holy Spirit” that is the human body, Christian believers have always understood the glory and the impermanence of containing God’s presence in earthly vessels. We know that we are still journeying, still between the times—like the Israelites on pilgrimage—towards our future New Jerusalem. Yet the contemporary church, perhaps especially the Western church, frequently behaves as though it cannot exist without permanent foundations of brick or stone.

In fact, the entire project of Traveling Tabernacles might be understood by reference to the poet Dante’s famous summary of the four dimensions of meaning highlighted in early Christian interpretation of scripture. To illustrate, Dante refers to Psalm 114 (“When Israel came out of Egypt”). The historical sense refers to “the exit of the Children of Israel from the Egypt at the time of Moses.” But the Psalm also looks ahead to “our redemption done by Christ.” Applied to our own spiritual and moral lives now, “it means to us the conversion of the soul from the struggle and misery of sin to the state of grace.” And finally, the meaning of the Psalm will find its fulfillment in “the leave taking of the blessed soul from the slavery of this corruption to the freedom of eternal glory.”

The experience of Traveling Tabernacles is similarly multi-dimensional. Their meanings are not idiosyncratic to the artist, but rather help us to see Christ and to see ourselves in the figures of the paintings, and to see our own pilgrimage as made complete in God’s Way of Salvation—which is in fact the title given by the artist to the sequence of all the Tabernacles.

The Studio for Art, Faith & History sponsored an installation of the tabernacle of the Stations of the Cross at SoulFest, New England’s largest outdoor Christian music festival. Cox’s large convases evoke the traditional fourteen stages of Christ’s journey to Golgotha solely through images of Jesus’s face. They were placed slalom-like across the bottom of one of the ski slopes at Gunstock Resort, home of SoulFest. The installation was large enough to shape the landscape and give the field of folk a shared visual experience. Six hundred or more SoulFest’ers made their deliberate way through the Way of the Cross.

Several volunteers for the Studio kept an eye on the paintings, handed out fliers about the Stations of the Cross, and answered questions.  Nathaniel Youndt prepared this account of his experience of The Way of the Cross at SoulFest.

Knowing what to do with art is often a foreign idea to Evangelical Christians, let alone knowing what to do when art is used as a liturgical worship tool. The Studio for Art, Faith, and History wanted to show that art can and should be used as a medium of meditation and prayer within the church, and planting Gay Cox’s Way of the Cross canvases at SoulFest challenged the pervasive notion that art belongs in galleries and museums, and can't be understood by the lay person.

The exhibit opened on Thursday afternoon and ran until Saturday evening. During those three days, I saw Christians approach the paintings of Christ with eagerness, timidity, confusion, and some with discomfort. Several viewers were familiar with the practice of the Stations of the Cross and came with intention and reverence. One couple came through and spent 30-40 minutes carefully seeing each of the fourteen paintings. They returned, the man in tears, requesting that I thank the artist and noting that this exhibit could help so many people.

Another man came through with his daughter, an art student, and we began a discussion about art in context. I relayed my experience in the Duomo of Orvieto, Italy—how the architecture enables you to engage in physical worship. Walking across the front of the cathedral, reading the carved panels depicting the biblical story from Creation to Revelation has the viewer literally walking through God’s story; the windows in the San Brizio Chapel are placed by the risen Christ’s face, forcing you to raise your hand to view his face, thereby taking the stance of viewing one who is majestic. Following this explanation, the man said: “I get it now. I didn’t understand how important the actual place of art was until now.”

Another woman reported to me that she found her experience with the Stations somewhat unnerving. The exhibit was next to the main stage, where worship music boomed all day. The band was singing the chorus “Hallelujah! He reigns!” while she stared into the huge eyes of the bleeding, beaten, and despised Christ. She said it felt so wrong, but, at the same time, the contrast was appropriate. Praise mingled with grief; tasting goodness and hope amidst the reality of sin and death.

These are the kind of encounters we had dared hope people would have with Gay’s work. Well over 600 people passed through The Way of the Cross that weekend and their responses were overwhelmingly positive, filled with emotion and the pain of being confronted with the image of the suffering Christ, 5 and 6 feet tall in front of them, knowing that it was for them that he endured such a death. Even tearing down the exhibit had a surprising effect on me. As I dragged the paint-thickened canvases, like blood-encrusted rags, across the field I felt like I was somehow participating in the Crucifixion.

There are powerful experiences available to us if only we are offered the genuine encounter. Art communicates Truth to humanity in ways written theology and rhetoric cannot access. We need only reach a place where we, as Christians, do not fear art, but see it as an opportunity to redeem and recreate. It is our task to see the unfiltered layers of reality as beautiful, though broken, and Gay’s artwork, planted like a maze through the field, provided so many Christians the chance to offer themselves to encounter the Face of Christ in a new way.