Feeling panic yet?  Are your taxes done?  Deadline’s in two weeks!  Does this season bring the panic on?  Well, I can’t help you with your taxes, but we are going to be talking about panic today. We’re going to talk about fear.  In 1947 Vladimir Zenchenkov, a government accounting clerk in Russia, returned home from a night of drinking to discover he had misplaced 400 ration cards owned by his boss.  This was not good. Ration cards were a prized commodity in postwar Russia. Fearing her husband would be sent to Siberia for life, Mrs. Zenchenkov advised him to make himself scarce. The next day she told his coworkers that he had run off with another woman. For the next 22 years, the terrified man never once left his house.

In 1969, Mrs. Zenchenkov died, and her husband went to the police station to turn himself in. He was told that the ration cards had turned up in his desk drawer the day after he disappeared in 1947.   It’s amazing what fear will do to us, isn’t it?

Ann Landers was an advice columnist who received over 10,000 letters a day. Once, when asked what the most common problem people write about was, without hesitation she said “Fear.”  Fear comes in many forms.  Louis Pasteur is reported to have had such an irrational fear of dirt and infection that he refused to shake hands.  U.S. President and Mrs. Benjamin Harrison were so intimidated by the newfangled electricity installed in the White House they didn’t dare touch the switches. If there were no servants around to turn off the lights when the Harrison’s went to bed, they slept with them on.  It is said that the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin so feared for his safety that his residence in Moscow contained eight bedrooms. Each night Stalin chose a bedroom at random to sleep in to ensure that no one knew exactly where he was located.

Dr. Phillip McGraw, popularly known as Dr. Phil on his daily talk show, said, “Our everyday choices separate the sane and successful from the frustrated and failing. The important thing to understand is that the number one catalyst in the choices we make is fear.”  I don’t always agree with Dr. Phil, but this is true.  The problem that causes many of us to make wrong choices is that we are afraid--afraid of what our friends will think, afraid of ridicule, afraid of failing, afraid of being hurt.   Even the disciples of Jesus gave into fear!

There was a movie a couple years ago starring Jodie Foster titled “The Panic Room.”  Foster played a recently divorced woman who is pleased to find a brownstone apartment in New York City for her and her daughter. It was to be the place where they would begin life anew.  But their joy turns to terror when three thugs break into their new home.  The thugs are seeking millions of dollars hidden there by the former owner.  To escape, the woman and her daughter retreat to the home’s one unique feature – a self-contained concrete room – the panic room.  The panic room features a steel door which cannot be penetrated, video monitors and a loudspeaker system. Their intention is simple.  They will hunker down in safety until the robbers go away.

There is much more to the story.  But what the woman and her daughter first intended is pretty much what Jesus’ disciples did after his crucifixion. Fearing the same people that had arrested, convicted and crucified their Master, they retreated to their own panic room, to the safety of a home where they could lock the door. They probably figured they would hunker down for a while, wait out the danger, and then when the uproar over Jesus had passed, they would slip out of Jerusalem and back to their old lives. They probably figured that once the crisis was over, they could go back to the way things used to be.

If the risen Christ had not appeared to these frightened disciples and calmed their fearful hearts, you have to wonder whether they would ever have amounted to anything at all. They were down, disillusioned, doubting. Even though some of them had already encountered the risen Christ, they were still stunned by the events of the preceding days. The last thing they expected was that this would be day that would bring greatness out of each of them.

It began when Christ made Himself REAL to them.  There they were, with the doors locked in fear, when Christ suddenly stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Now this was a common greeting in those days, but when Jesus used it here it had great significance!  After He said it, Jesus showed them his hands and his feet – the proof that He had completed his plan of salvation for the world.  There really was peace now between God and men!

Do you know which phrase Jesus used more than any other? “Don’t be afraid.” (Rev.1:17) But they were afraid!  It was all too much for them.  So, He said to them, “Peace be with you!” He showed them his hands and side. He wanted them to know it was really Him.  Jesus was really there!  He was really risen!  And “the disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.”

Here’s the importance of his showing them his hands and side.  The greatest problem the disciples had was the greatest problem you and I have – a lack of faith.  What is fear?  A lack of faith!  Faith in ourselves or other, perhaps. But ultimately, a lack of faith in God!  Those marks in Jesus’ hands prove we’ve been forgiven for all sin – even our lack of faith!  If we completely trust in a God who loves us that much, can’t we handle anything that comes our way?

A writer named Rollo May traveled to Mt. Athos, a peninsula of Greece inhabited exclusively by monks. He arrived just as the monks were celebrating Greek Orthodox Easter, a ceremony thick with symbolism.  Icons.  Incense.  At the height of the service the priest gave everyone three Easter eggs, wonderfully decorated. “Christos Anesti!” he said. “Christ is Risen!” Each person there, including Rollo, responded according to custom, “He is risen indeed!”  Here’s what’s interesting: Rollo May was not a believer. But he writes, “I was seized then by a moment of spiritual reality: What would it mean for our world if He had truly risen?”

The answer to that question is easy: No longer would you and I be afraid! If we knew without a doubt that Jesus is risen from the dead, we would fear nothing.  Death? Are you kidding me?  Death is entrance to God’s glory!  If we are a disciple of Jesus, the day of our dying ought to be the happiest day of our life! Do you believe that? Well, it’s easy to say yes, isn’t it? But we are not much different from those disciples on Easter Sunday night! We believe it, but there is a part of us that is still uncertain, doubting… Maybe like Thomas? Well, we are more like Thomas than we want to admit, aren’t we?  Have you been living like Thomas since Easter?

How many of us spend years worrying about finances, worrying about our health, worrying about our loved ones, worrying about our children and how to raise them, worrying what people think of us, worrying whether they think of us at all?  When we truly believe that Christ really did rise from the grave, when we believe that our lives are in God’s hands and that God loves us more than we love our own children – when God leads us to trust that – then there is no limit to what God can do for us and through us. Jesus appeared to the disciples and said to them, “Peace be with you!” And, knowing how much their hearts needed reassurance He repeated himself.  “Peace be with you!”

Bob and Gayle Potter became foster parents and adopted a six-year-old girl named Sasha.  Sasha had been abused and neglected by her family.  She was fearful and unable to trust anyone.  One day, Gayle discovered that little Sasha was hiding food in her room.  Not just small snacks.  She had stuffed food into every nook and cranny, hiding it in the closet, under her mattress, behind the door!  This little girl had grown up with the fear that there would never be enough – enough food, enough love, enough security.  She hoarded every bit of food she could find, just in case she couldn’t trust the adults to take care of her.

How sad, and yet how very much like us. Jesus taught us to pray for our daily bread. He taught us not to worry about tomorrow. Just focus on today and trust God.  But some of us can’t do that, can we? Why? Because deep down we are like little Sasha – never enough material goods, never enough love, never enough security. We’re afraid. And friends, Christ showed his disciples his hands and side so they would know it doesn’t have to be that way! As someone once said, “The presence of fear is a sure sign that we’re trusting in our own strength.” When will we quit hoarding life and start trusting life to our loving heavenly Father?

“Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit . . .” Why did they need the Holy Spirit? Because Jesus would no longer be with them physically. He would not keep reassuring them by showing them his hands and side. They would need to depend on the Holy Spirit, working through the Word of God.  He knew this would not be easy for them. They would face unbelievable hardship. Without the assurance of the Holy Spirit they wouldn’t make it.  And that’s true for us as well. We believe in Christ.  Each year, just as we did last week, we have this grand celebration of Christ’s resurrection, and yet still we live such timid, tentative lives!  We need continually to be in the Word so that Christ’s Spirit will be as real to us as it was to them!

And it was real to them!  Look what happened. They went from being fearful to being some of the most daring people to ever walk this earth!  Ridicule, torture, nor the threat of death could not deter them. They answered that question, “What would it mean for our world if He had truly risen?” by the way they lived!  Nothing could stop them. That’s why more than a billion people today bow at the name of Jesus.  Their terror turned to trusting, their fear was replaced by faith.  They left the panic room to plant the Gospel in every corner of our world!

Now the question is: what could you and I do when we truly believe that Christ is risen from the dead?  Could we make a difference in the world?  Could we become more loving, more daring, more dramatic in how we carry the cross of Christ?  Bette Midler sang this song years ago: “It’s the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance.  It’s the dream afraid of waking that never takes a chance.  It’s the one who won’t be taken who cannot seem to give.  And the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live.”

Is that where you are right now?  Are you “the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live?” Are you hiding in your own spiritual panic room?  Don’t forget, Christ can come into any room!  Christ can give you his peace!  He can breathe into you his Spirit!  Unlike Thomas, be there to let Him do it!  Don’t let any more of life pass you by!  Christ is alive!  There is nothing in heaven or on earth that we ever need to fear again!   Amen.