Matthew 28:9, 10, ‘Jesus met them and said, ‘Greetings!…Do not be afraid…’
These are the first words the Risen Christ speaks in Matthew’s Gospel (and they are also the words depicted in Greek in today’s image). Significantly, the word translated ‘Greetings’ is actually the imperative form of the word for ‘Rejoice.’ It become an idiom for greeting someone (similarly to the way ‘adios’ now just means ‘good bye,’ but literally means ‘[go] with God.’) , but it is technically the command: ‘Rejoice.’
In other words, the Risen Lord meets His people and ives them two *commands* 1) Rejoice! And 2) Do not be afraid!
If the Risen Christ is the Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End (Rev.22:13), then He—as the anastasiform one—embraces, inhabits, upholds, permeates, and makes present to Himself all times….Thus, every moment has, in a sense, become Easter Morning…every moment has become the appearing of the Risen Jesus in wonder and joy to His people, every moment is invaded by the resurrection, defined by the One who Died and yet lives forever more…What a glorious dissolution of Time’s Tyranny! Time itself is now, for us, the Risen Jesus Christ; He is the time in which we live, just as there is a sense in which he is the space in which we live (Col.1:17). And as this Risen One, as this Ascended One, as this all encompassing Lord who is Beginning and End and the Medium of all created existence—as this One, He says to His people in words that—because spoken by the Risen One—are spoken in *every moment* and at *every place*: Rejoice! Do not be afraid!
