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A man said to me recently, "I'm just plain 'burned-out' after Christmas. I have lugged the Christmas tree out to the curb, but all the ornaments are still packed in boxes in the spare bedroom. Then there is the end of the year and all that goes along with that ... the working to stay ahead of inflation and trying to keep from going down during the recession ... working hard to get through college or get a promotion or get ahead in life." This man was caught in a grinding toil and going through the motions. No wonder we hear a whole lot about "burned-out." Psychologists say it is the result of a conflict of expectations, usually at a subconscious level. We have experienced conflict that we are not what we expected to be, or our life has not accomplished what we thought it should have accomplished. And now we are burned-out. I haven't picked up a women's or a men's magazine or any kind of religious periodical in the last two years that hasn't had an article on the "burned-out" syndrome. Executives in highrise buildings experience it. So do nurses, housewives, teachers, secretaries, farmers, social workers, judges, doctors, and clergymen. In fact, everybody seems to feel some sort of "burn out", which doesn't mean the wick has burned up but the light has gone out.

Many of us remember that maintenance man from Brooklyn who won the world's biggest lottery jackpot: $5,000,000. He did it by picking six lucky numbers. The day after he picked up the money he returned to work. Several days later he wrote, "I said to myself, what kind of nut am I? I'm putting in lightbulbs when I have $5,000,000." Well, that is the same kind of nut all of us are. No matter how much you have, you still have the perennial problem of keeping the lightbulbs in, the light going, and the candle lit. You still have the problem of staying lit up, and we seem to never to get to a point where that is not a problem. That is what we call the "burned-out" syndrome.

Isaiah, when he writes "until her vindication goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning torch," is reaffirming todays Epiphany Scripture. He is saying that the Messiah will be a special light or torch that no darkness or desolation can extinguish. By "burning torch," Isaiah is saying this is a special revelation. There have been all kinds of general revelations about God prior to this. Now there is general revelation and there is special revelation. General revelation can be seen, for example, in the creation. You can look around you, at the world God has made, and see evidence of God. That is general revelation. Reasoning and logic participate in general revelation - they can persuade us of the existence of God and our need for God.

But there is something beyond that. There is the "true light," the "special" revelation which is Christ. And Isaiah is trying to make it clear that this is unique. It is the torch that shall never go out. Even the Word of God, the lamp unto our feet, a light unto our path, sometimes grows dim because of our lack of faith in it. But the true light that lights all the world shall never be extinguished. You must understand how easy it is for general revelations, or for the lesser lights in our lives (upon which quite often our religion is based) to grow dim and go out.
Samuel Miller, the former dean of Harvard Divinity School, writes:

Believing requires a great deal more than mere intellectual assent. A kind of dynamic actuality, a reservoir of positive energy, a strength to pierce beyond the very limits of credibility, is demanded. Faith may fall on evil days, exhaust itself, and what once sustained us then becomes a burden we are forced to carry. Our believing fluctuates as mysteriously as a candle flame in a gusty world.

In Isaiah 62:4 Isaiah speaks of the feelings of being forsaken and desolate. For us forsakenness and desolation could stand for a state of mind, delusion and "burned-outness." Darkness stands for despair, depression, middle-age crisis, adolescence, menopause, professional crisis, spiritual darkness. That is a human reality. These are obvious facts in our lives. The Bible says that the light came into the world but the world knew Him not. But the true light which lightens up all men has come and the world could put it out.

Let's discuss this syndrome that we call burned-outness or desolation. You have read a lot about it. Many of you have suffered a great deal from it. Let us try to diagnose the symptoms of this malady that seems to inflict us in the twentieth century. Let us also try and state what is the disease proper, not just diagnose the symptoms. But most of all, let us then talk about what is the cure. My greatest criticism of most of the sermons I hear is that they spend a great deal of time diagnosing what is wrong with the world and the evils of the world. But I hear very little said about the cure. Let's talk about the cure; but first, let's diagnose the problem.

I. Diagnosis of Symptoms

The syndrome which we call the "burned-out" state was first formulated by the novelist Graham Greene in his book, The Burnt Out Affair. Since Greene's book, psychologists, theologians and other religious people have adopted that as one of the real syndromes or neurotic tendencies from which all of us seem to suffer. Psychologists tell us that 80% of us suffer from the "burnt-out" syndrome at some time or another in our life. Some people call it the "after-Christmas blahs." One called it "Nada." Ernest Hemingway called it the "black ass." Some call it "middle-age crisis." Some call it despondence and despair. The symptoms are migraines, nervousness, backaches, drinking too much, depression, insomnia, tension, divorce or separation, dropping out of school or whatever. Or we could go on and on. You might not have all these symptoms; you might have only one.

Often it really is described as a feeling of not caring, of numbness, of passive non-resistance, of passive indifference, of saying, "Well, I have done my bit. I have done my share. I am going to retire now and let someone else do it." That is "burned-outness"! Often it reflects itself in religion. People will say to me, "Well, Pastor, I don't know what it is, but I don't have that feeling in my heart that I used to have. The light has gone out. It affects every part of our life. Often the symptoms are that you and I blame outside things or circumstances or persons for our condition. We blame it on our spouses, on the circumstances, on the times, on our job, on our boss. It is easy to say, "If I had more time to myself; if I had a little more time to play golf or to go sailing or fishing, it wouldn't be that way." Or, "If I had another job, another wife, or another husband, it wouldn't be that way." Or, "If the children just didn't make so much noise and didn't get in so many things all the time." Or, "If I could just live somewhere else or in another time."

While many of these "if onlys" might make a difference, the root cause of the problem is the fact that the light has burned out in your life. We need a light that is eternal, that never goes out. That's been the longing of mankind since the beginning of time. The Greeks, with all their various religious legends, saw that as their greatest longing of humanity. That is why and how they formulated the old legend about Mt. Olympus. Once every four years at the Olympics, we get a runner to take the torch supposedly from the eternal flame and carry it to symbolize to the whole world that "there is an eternal torch." Even though they may have lit that torch with a cigarette lighter, a Bic, there is still that hope and that longing that such an eternal light does exist that will never go out.

Tolstoy, in his book, War and Peace, lets the character Pierre become Tolstoy. When I read Tolstoy's biography I understood that Pierre was autobiographical. He was a rich man who inharited a lot of farms. He had tried everything from hang-gliding to scuba diving. He tried making more money, running the farms, living a wild, sinful life off at college. You name it, and he had done it. But he reached the point of just being burned-out with no goals left, no joy, no feeling. These are the symptoms. But what is the disease?

II. Disease Proper

Graham Greene in his book, The Burnt-Out Affair, describes the main character whose name is Monsieur Queery, an architect of international fame who has built a career to fantastic heights - only to find that now he is the greatest man in his field in the world, but that it is all tasteless and flat. Have you ever reached that point? Strive to reach what you thought was your ambition and your goal, only to find that it tastes like ashes and vinegar. Queery turned his back then on everything - fame, family, honor, wealth - to seek anonymity in the jungle. Finally, he ends up in the heart of the jungle of Africa at a Dominican monastery hospital, given to caring for lepers. I don't know how many of you have ever been around leprosy. It burns wild for awhile and then "burns itself up," leaving you numb with the nervous system gone, no feeling, no smell, nor ability to hear. For the most part these lepers moved about on stumps of feet and carried on as best they could with hands without fingers or with arms without hands. They were all right now. It wasn't contagious any longer. They had been mutilated by it, but there was no pain. There is no pain to leprosy after it has gone through you. They are simply called "burned-out" cases at the hospital. That is where the term comes from. And Queery, this famous architect, soon recognized that he, too, was just a "burned-out" case, burned out by the ravages of civilization, its furious passions and besetting fires of ambition. No emotions are left, no ecstasies desired. He is just numb.

Burned-out means the light has gone out inside of you. Now you never get burned out from working too hard. It is not caused by that. It comes from the stress of the conflicts in your life. It is the lack of meaning in what you are doing. It is the lack of a goal and objective. It is the lack of returning to the fires of your youth to keep the fires kindled and glowing.

Most of all, it's the result of not having burning within you the flame of God, the eternal torch that never goes out. The United Methodist Church picked as its symbol the flame. Why the flame? It is to remind us of that one true light that is eternal and that burns and can never go out. And if you suffer from a burned-out kind of syndrome in your life, it is because you don't have the eternal flame burning within you. The disease is characterized by persons who are ever trying to light up their lives. They are always trying to get "lit up" or "turned on." Maybe it is hang-gliding. That sort of turns me on. Or maybe it is scuba diving. Or marijuana. Or going to the beach or playing golf or watching TV or boozing it up. You search for things to turn you on. The symptoms of our disease are being burned out and looking for some way to be "lit up."

I see it a lot in my profession. Take a man like Albert Schweitzer. He was a good example of a burned-out case. He suffered from it. He was ahead of his time. He was the world's greatest organist, the world's greatest authority on Bach, a Ph.D. in music. He graduated from the Divinity School with a Bachelor of Divinity degree. Then he got a Ph.D. in theology, then an M.D. degree, then a Master of Medicine. He became the greatest authority on tropical diseases in the world. He reached it all by age forty and it was flat, tasteless. So, because of his reverence for life and his protest against the massive ambitions of war and power, he built with his own hands an outpost in an African jungle for the nurturing of the True Light, so that he wouldn't end up burned out like all the rest of the world.

But you can look at other people like Ernest Hemingway or Marilyn Monroe, or nine of the ten richest men in the world who committed suicide because they were burned out. Some people drop out or sail away into the sunset or numb the darkness of their lives with alcohol and drugs.

Gail Sheehy wrote the best seller, Passages. I just got her new book. Like everybody else, if it had her name on it I had to read it. It said the same thing the first one said. It is entitled, The Pathfinder. But one thing I sensed that she was groping with and couldn't explain was the problem of people getting into the passageway, but having nothing to light up the passageway so they could decide which door to go through and which passage to take. If you are in darkness, even though you knew you needed to go through the passage, it doesn't do you any good unless you have a torch to light up the way you need to go. This is why Jesus said, "I am the light of the world." It is why the Bible says. "He is a light unto our path, a lamp unto our feet." Much of our "burned-outness" is a result of our feeling that we are forced to do something that is imposed on us, like being a doctor because your mother and daddy wanted you to be a doctor. Or having four children because your husband wanted four children. Or having to move to another town because the company said you had to move. That is a sign of our adolescence. It is saying you haven't taken charge of your life. There's nothing wrong with being a doctor because your mother and dad wanted you to be a doctor as long as you choose to be a doctor. There is nothing wrong with being the mother of four children because your husband wanted to have four children, if you have chosen these four children as yours, and you love them. There is nothing wrong with having to move to another town because the company says you have to move, if you choose to be there. The right to choose doesn't mean you get to do what you want to do. The right to choose means that, for the first time in your life, you take charge of your life and you choose what you are doing. That's the way you avoid some of that stress of having to do what you don't want to do. If there's anybody I get impatient with it is the spoiled, never-grownup kid who always says, "I don't go to church anymore because, when I was growing up, my parents always made me go." That might be true, but I think, "Why can't you reach adulthood and why can't you take charge of your life and choose to do what your parents taught you to do? It could be your choice." Burned-out is caused by our not taking charge of ourselves. We need to choose what we are doing so that the stress that comes from it is the result of the goals we choose in our lives. Then we won't feel burned out.

III. Cure

Now what is the cure? We have alluded to the burned-outness. It is because we don't have the true light that never goes out in our lives. It is because we haven't taken charge of our lives and chosen what we are doing. We have rebelled because we haven't had the responsibility to take charge of our lives and choose it.

Pierre in War and Peace is really Tolstoy. Tolstoy tells about how he had been burned out, how he had everything but really had nothing. He was on this train going nowhere, thinking he would end his life. And he met a man who was a Mason. This man said to him, "Would you like to be brought from darkness to light?" Tolstoy said, "Yes." The man said, "Meet me at the lodge meeting tonight at 9:00?" And he gave him the address. The man said, "And I will bring you from darkness to light, bring you to the great light even in the midst of the lesser lights that fade away." That night Tolstoy went to the meeting and those Masons brought him from darkness into light and he saw for the first time in his life the one great light that stands even among the lesser lights, that never will be extinguished. Tolstoy, from that moment on, became one of the great Christians of all time. The light burned in his life from then on. He had goals, meaning, a future. He knew what he wanted to do with his life. And he left a mark on the world. Light that penetrates beyond the surface, the situation, the circumstances, to the hidden darkness of the inner soul.

When that light comes it shows us what our life is really like, doesn't it? It shows up the things in your life. I'm reminded of a little boy who said, "Mommy, when you die are you going to heaven?" She said, "Yes, and you'll go to heaven, too." Then he started crying and she said, "What is the matter?" He said, "I'm crying because daddy won't go to heaven." She said, "Why do you think daddy won't go to heaven?" He said, "Because he can't leave the store." Think about that.

When the light comes, it shines up the basic realities of what really are our priorities. "He won't go to heaven because he can't leave the store." The torch reveals, not only what we are, but shines on where we are going to go. And that is imperative. If you're going somewhere you need to see where you are going. I remember many a night flying home in a private plane I had chartered to go somewhere to speak. The darkness of the night and the yearning to get back home makes you feel lonely and lost. Then we got near the airport, and we saw the familiar lights of our town. As we approached the airport, all of a sudden, they threw the switches and the lights on the runway flooded our path. When an airplane I'm on is landing, I always pray, "Dear God, don't let that light go out until I have landed." It is a horrible feeling to be flying around in the dark with nothing to light your way.

Do you suffer from a burned-outness, a sort of numbness in your life? Do you seem to have lost all goals and fun in life? Has even the zeal for your profession and your ambition gone out? It doesn't have to be that way. You can have the "burning torch" that enlightens the world.

I remember when I was a boy we used to sing that little song:

This little Gospel light of mine,
I'm going to let it shine.
Don't let Satan blow it out;
I'm going to let it shine.

The one true light that I'm talking about, that lights all the world, including the darkness in our lives, cannot be extinguished because it burns eternally in Christ Jesus. If you don't have that light in your life and that flame burning and flowing, if you are often feeling "burned out", I pray that you will open your heart and your mind and be illuminated by that eternal light.