It’s still Easter.
This is your regular reminder.
I know how it is: the lamb is long since gone from the fridge, the extra half pound you gained by eating Cadbury Cream Eggs has been shed in anticipation of that summer by the pool, so there aren’t very many reminders.
But it’s still Easter.
As long as the embodied, resurrected Jesus is seated at the right hand of God the Father, it’s still Easter.
This is a claim that demands faith. Ongoing faith. Faith in the most ancient and basic and important claim that Christians make: Jesus is Lord.
To sit at God’s right hand is to be charged with reigning over the world on God’s behalf. It is as though God has said on Easter Sunday: let us recreate humanity after our image, and after our image, and let them rule the world on our behalf. 
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn, resurrected son, over all creation.
The king.
And yet, we do not now see all things subjected to his rule.
“He must reign until all things are subjected to him.” It is Easter, but Easter’s dawn has not yet reached the full light of day, has not yet driven darkness out of every corner.
“He must reign until all things are subjected to him.” In the mean time, we must discern: is what we see the activity of God? Or is it the action of the powers that are not yet subject?
What is God up to in the world? There’s a question. But it also means we must carefully distinguish it from, What is happening in the world?
Some of us are too apt to lump all in the God basket. Some of us are too apt to lump all in the “against God” basket.
Jesus is Lord: God is at work in the world.
All things are not yet subject: not all that happens in the world is the hand of God.
As Barth says, power is not God; God is the one who is all-powerful.
More provocatively, he says, “Power in itself is not merely neutral. Power in itself is evil” (ยง31.2).
But there is power defined by God.
Better, there is power as defined by Easter. It is the power by which the crucified Jesus was appointed son of God by the resurrection from the dead according to the Spirit (Rom 1:4).
It is the resurrection power of God, at work to drive back the powers of sin and death and law.
It is the resurrection power of God, at work through the one who was raised from the dead and now sits enthroned at God’s right hand.
It’s still Easter.
To be precise, it’s Ascension Day. The weakness of the church in the West is entirely related to the fact that the Lordship of Jesus Christ is forgotten. No rule, no high priestly service, no sending the Spirit, Jesus Christ reduced to an ethic. You should tell us all to go to church today so that your wonderful post can become worship–if only the churches would have worship on the day of the Ascension of our Lord.
To be completely precise, every day is ascension day, just as every day is Easter.
Gal 4:8-11 — But then, indeed, when you did not know God, you served those which by nature are not gods. But now after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which you desire again to be in bondage? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I am afraid for you, lest I have laboured for you in vain.
You are free to worship, don’t let the church stop you.
I have yet to be convinced that churches exist to conduct or facilitate ‘worship’.
i love this. these are the themes that echo in my heart, too. it is still easter.