Worshipers celebrate Palm Sunday

Hundreds of worshipers marked the start of Holy Week Sunday, hearing about the crucifixion of Jesus and how that translates into modern life.

While the children were downstairs learning about Palm Sunday from costumed Bible characters, the adults upstairs at the Garden City Community Church had their own Passion Sunday observance.

Pastors read the parts of narrator, Jesus and the Apostle Peter. Worshipers stood in for the crowd and groups of men or women. The choir chanted "Crucify him!" as the congregation read aloud the Gospel of Mark's account of the days leading up to and the Crucifixion.

"They struck his head with a reed, spat upon him and knelt down in homage to him," Senior Pastor James W. Adelmann, as the narrator, read. "After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him."

The reading closed with Jesus' body being secreted in a tomb.

"I was tearful at the end of it," church member Joe Rivera of New Hyde Park said. "It's like you were living it."

Adelmann said he wondered if the congregation would be overwhelmed by the 15-minute reading. He sought advice from a friend, who said, "Ask the people to think about how difficult it was to live through it."

Adelmann's sermon urged worshipers to forget the trappings of modern, manageable life and be open to the shock of the Passion and the compassion that realization can bring.

"Whether we realize it or not, this Passion is being played out within us and around us all the time," he said. "This story wakes us up to the drama, to the story that can change everything."

For Rivera, it resonated. "People have to be grabbed by the shoulders and shaken a little bit because we've become so insular," he said. "We need to be more involved."