Artist Creates ‘The Church Without Walls’

Almost as soon as Michelle Loyd-Paige stepped into the library at Plymouth Heights Christian Reformed Church this winter, she saw a clay creation of open, praying hands.

She was there to view some of the work of artist Chrysanthi Sinniah.

“These hands really struck me, reminding me of the power and significance of prayer,” said Loyd-Paige, who is dean for multicultural affairs at Calvin College.

“I asked Chrysanthi if I could take photographs of this that I could use for a slide show I was putting together for the CRC's Prayer Summit." The summit was held in the Los Angeles area in mid-April.

Chrythani readily agreed to have photos taken. Then she showed Michelle a work titled “The Church Without Walls.”

Looking at it, Michelle says she realized that this richly biblical and symbolic work would fit in with yet another upcoming event — the CRC's Multiethnic Conference 2013, for which she is serving as chairperson.

“I had been asking what type of artwork we  could have displayed at the conference," said Loyd-Paige.

“When I saw her work, I knew that it tied in to what I had been thinking, including the sermon I will be giving."

The theme of the conference, running June 7-9, is “Am I Welcome?” It will focus on the church being open and hospitable to all people — a similar theme of Chrythani's "The Church Without Walls."

Featuring worship, speakers and breakout sessions, the Multiethnic Conference 2013 is a ministry of  the CRC's Office of Race Relations. It will run at the same time that the CRC's Synod 2013 is beginning.

Michelle and Chrysanthi whose husband teaches chemistry at Calvin had gotten to know one another at a college event, drawn together by an appreciation for poetry and art.

Chrysanthi is a native of Sri Lanka. Even as a younger girl, she loved working with clay. She recalls how as a middle school student she would dip her hands into the crystal-clear water of a rice field and scoop up clay that she could work with.

As she considers the Multiethnic Conference, she says the theme "Am I Welcome?" matters deeply to her, because she sees God' s answer to this question clearly in the Bible.

“Is my neighbor welcome in God's church as I am? The neighbor who God has asked me to love as myself, second only to loving him.

“I have stayed at Plymouth Heights CRC because I saw the church being directed to growing God's heart for the stranger and alien and the poor and the outcast.”

She and her husband, Kumar, came to Grand Rapids with their family so he could teach at Calvin. She studied and worked at the Calvin College Ceramics Studio, where she learned a great deal from her teachers, she says.

Referring to the work that will be on display at the conference, she says she calls it  “The Church Without Walls” because it has only two walls, "allowing entrance to the sanctuary."

Among other things, she says, “the form and foundation of the sculpture are reminiscent of Noah's Ark. The entire world and all in it belongs to God, but the church is God's temple."

On the floor of the church, she said, are faint markings of chains that have fallen onto the floor, symbolizing Jesus’ sufferings as he came to release captives to freedom.

There are other images and symbols as well — of a lamp and lampstand, special tiles that come from Sri Lanka, and pillars in the middle of the church that show a wine glass and its stem.

The wine glass opens into the shape of hands that, she says, “spill out the sacrifice” of Christ’s blood, washing and purifying the floor of the church.

“My sculpture is an effort to depict ...the exclusive, inclusive, love of Jesus, being offered to a broken and imprisoned world,” she says.

“The broken body of Jesus himself, being offered to the world outside, is represented by the cross being revealed, lifted outward of the confines of the church that displays no roof, symbolizing our shelter as being the limitless love and limitless being of our God.”