Sunday 2 April 2023 – Palm Sunday

Collect
Almighty and everlasting God,
who in your tender love towards the human race
sent your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ
to take upon him our flesh
and to suffer death upon the cross:
grant that we may follow the example of his patience and humility,
and also be made partakers of his resurrection;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen

Matthew 21. 1-21
When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples,
saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her;
untie them and bring them to me.
If anyone says anything to you, just say this, “The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately. ”
This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, “Tell the daughter of Zion,
Look, your king is coming to you, humble,
and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them.
A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.

The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?”
The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”
Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple,
and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves.
He said to them, “It is written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you are making it a den of robbers.”
The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them.

But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did,
and heard the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David,”
they became angry and said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read,
“Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself’?”
He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.
In the morning, when he returned to the city, he was hungry.
And seeing a fig tree by the side of the road, he went to it and found nothing at all on it but leaves.
Then he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.
When the disciples saw it, they were amazed, saying, “How did the fig tree wither at once?”
Jesus answered them, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only will you do what has been done to the fig tree,
but even if you say to this mountain,
“Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done.