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Diorama delights local crowds

2 min read

For 21 years, Messiah Lutheran Church has orchestrated a “passion drive-through diorama” featuring scenes from Holy Week portrayed by costumed performers.

The dramatic event features about 90 actors and participants nightly for three nights, and many drive by again and again to witness the scenes.

Pastor Rusty May said the Messiah Lutheran Church Diorama Committee outdid itself this year.

“We had a wonderful response from the congregation to set up the scenes, participate in the cast and provide meals for all of the people in the cast,” he said.

He said he was mesmerized the first time he saw these drive-through dramatizations of the stations of the cross when he joined the church six years ago.

“The event is very dramatic,” he said. “The first year I was enthralled. It was much more inspirational and moving than I could imagine from the oral descriptions I had been given.”

He said one way to measure the success of the event is the comments people make when they drive through, which were outstanding this year. They can also be humorous.

“One child from the back seat of a car told one on the volunteers, “I got to see Jesus get better again!'” he said.

That isn’t the only child’s comment he remembers with a smile.

The church also does an elaborate Christmas diorama each year.

“There are as many different scenes of nativity as there are in the Passion diorama,” he said. “Last year my wife, P.J., portrayed a pregnant Mary at the inn, where there was no room for them. A child who’s family had driven through a couple of times shouted to my wife, ‘Don’t worry Mary! Everything turns out OK!'”

Both events are something he looks forward to every year.

For Easter, there were the 13 stations, which included a scene of money changes in the Temple, Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemene and three people on crosses.

When asked how the actors do the scenes with the cross, May said, “There is a small platform that they stand on, and there are ropes that hold their hands up on the cross.”

Mark your calendar for the Christmas diorama, which will be Dec. 10, 11 and 12, starting around 7 p.m.

For information you can call the church at 995-0133 or go to the site Messiahnfm.org.