Spiritual Spillages
St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills, MD
July 26, 2026
Year A, Proper 12: The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
1 Kings 3:5-12
Psalm 119:129-136
Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
So, I’m still buzzing about the writers’ conference I attended down at St. Mary’s College in southern Maryland.
It’s been a month ago already, but I feel like I’m just beginning to absorb all that I experienced and learned during that amazing week from the outstanding teachers and super-talented participants.
And as I’ve continued to reflect on that time and those lessons, I’ve come to see that there is quite a lot of overlap between cultivating a creative life and nurturing a spiritual life.
In fact, a friend of mine told me the other day that she heard a poet say that all poets want to be priests!
And, perhaps, the opposite is true, too: all priests want to be poets!
On our first full day at the conference, we gathered for a talk about how to make an “artful life.”
And we heard that the most important thing is to simply show up, to make a commitment to doing the work, choosing to give the work our time and attention, creating a good habit - because nothing is going to happen unless we devote time and attention. Maybe that’s actually writing (or painting, or making music, or sculpting, or whatever). Or, maybe that’s just shutting down all our devices and just thinking, imagining, seeing where our minds and hearts take us.
One of the best tips I picked up was spending some time each day “free-writing,” just writing whatever comes to mind, not worrying about content, grammar, spelling, making sense…just writing.
One person called this free-writing, “spillages.”
Letting the thoughts and words just spill out of us – spillages – and then, occasionally, looking back over our spillages and maybe “gleaning” some memory, or idea, or even just a word, that we might want to explore or pursue.
Spillages.
Turning to today’s Bible lessons, honestly, it’s hard to know where to begin.
In the Old Testament lesson, we have God sounding kind of genie-like, saying to King Solomon, “ask what I should give you.”
And Solomon asks for wisdom – which, when you think of it, is a really wise request. Perhaps that’s a reminder that God is not a genie, that God has already given us all the good gifts that we really need.
And in today’s gospel lesson, we heard a collection of Jesus’ parables.
Jesus gets us thinking about the importance of smallness – the potential of smallness – the tiny mustard seed grows into a home for birds – the little bit of yeast produces a whole lot of bread - and the small pearl is so valuable that at least one merchant would sell everything to possess it.
And Jesus also reminds us of judgment – that we will be held responsible for how we live our lives – so, if we need to change our ways, the time is now.
And then there is the particularly rich passage from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans – there’s enough in there for many sermons, but I’ve been especially reflecting on Paul’s beautiful – and very honest - words on prayer:
“The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”
If you were here a couple of weeks ago, you may remember that we heard one of Jesus’ most familiar parables, the Parable of the Sower.
And in my sermon, I suggested that while the sower and the seeds are definitely important, the parable really hinges on the soil – is the soil healthy enough to receive the seeds, to nurture the seeds, to allow the seeds to take root and grow into something abundant and beautiful?
And of course, the parable is not really about agriculture or gardening – it’s about our souls, about how we receive the Good News, how we welcome God’s blessings and let God’s gifts take root and grow in our hearts, producing amazing abundance for us and for others.
And I talked about how we might cultivate our “soil” by, for example, cutting back on cable news, by just talking and talking and listening together.
But one of the most important ways for us to open our hearts, to cultivate our souls, is prayer – prayer when we’re together here, and also prayer when we’re alone, when it’s just God and us.
And this is exactly where a lot of us run into a problem.
I can’t tell you how many times parishioners, both here and everywhere I’ve been, how many times people have said to me, “I don’t know how to pray.”
“I don’t know how to pray.”
If it’s any comfort, this is a long-standing problem.
Jesus’ own disciples asked him to teach them how to pray.
And as we heard today from St. Paul, writing in the middle of the first century, even he, even the earliest Jesus followers, they did not know how to pray as they ought.
There are, of course, many thousands of prayers that we can read and recite.
And there are many thousands of books on prayer – I’ve got a bunch of them that I’m happy to lend you.
But the longer I’m at this, I’m more convinced that learning to pray is a lot like what I learned at the writer’s conference:
Showing up.
Making time – even just a little bit of time.
Listening carefully.
And maybe we should try spiritual spillages, whether we write it down or think it or just say it – just let it out and tell God what’s in our heart.
And, who knows, as we spill our hearts, we may glean some holy insights, some ideas or nudges that we might want to explore more deeply.
And, no doubt, our prayer will always be imperfect but, as St. Paul understood, the Spirit intercedes on our behalf with “sighs too deep for words.”
And, of course, God already knows what’s in our hearts anyway, God understands our hearts far better than we ever will.
And, you know, maybe prayer – our imperfect spiritual spillages – maybe prayer is like a mustard seed that can take root in our souls, growing our hearts, growing our souls, our lives – making our hearts even more beautiful than a pearl, making our lives more beautiful than we could have ever imagined.
So, at this point, I’m hoping maybe at least some of you are considering giving a little more time to prayer.
But maybe some of you have tried many times and felt like you’ve failed, and all this talk of spillages and gleaning has been… unconvincing.
I get it – and while prayer is certainly important, it’s not what’s most important.
What’s most important is that God has already given us everything we really need.
What’s most important is God’s indissoluble, unbreakable bond with us.
What’s most important is that, while we will be judged on our lives, God will not let go of us, no matter what.
And nobody has ever expressed this great and comforting truth better than St. Paul. So, I’ll give him the last word:
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Amen.
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