The Reckless Sower with The Rev. Matt Babcock

Over the next four weeks, For People will feature special guests from the Diocese of Atlanta: the Rev. Matt Babcock, the Rev. Michael White, Holle Tubbs, the Rev. Kenya Thompson. Each guest will write the For Faith weekly devotional and join For People host Melissa Rau to dive deeper into their reflections. Join us each week as they share their stories and insights.

In the first guest episode, Melissa has a conversation with the Rev. Matt Babcock, vicar at Holy Comforter Episcopal Church, on the parable of the reckless sower. Reflecting on Matthew 13, they call God the “reckless sower” because God keeps sowing hope, compassion, and grace even where no one expects life to grow. They discuss why the gospel isn’t asking us to obsess over outcomes, why the harvest remains a mystery, and how faith and leadership can look like simply dropping seeds and continuing to walk. Listen in for the full conversation. 

Read For Faith, the companion devotional.

The Rev. Matt Babcock began his ministry with Holy Comforter on August 11, 2025. Matt was raised in central Louisiana and graduated from Louisiana Tech University in 2007, earning a BS in Agricultural Business. Following undergraduate studies, he moved to North Carolina, where he was introduced to The Episcopal Church. What began as volunteer service in a food pantry led to a rediscovery of the presence of God through the fruits of a community with a shared vision to live the Gospel. Serving alongside parishioners seeking to restore the dignity of God’s creation eventually led Matt to explore a desire to foster communities of love as he discerned his own call to ordained ministry.

Prior to seminary, Matt had a rewarding career in commodities trading, risk management, finance, and banking. He graduated in 2019 from Yale Divinity School, having earned a Master of Divinity degree; he also earned a Diploma in Anglican Studies from Berkeley Divinity School. Since seminary training, Matt has served in various positions in the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, the Diocese of Chicago, and the Diocese of Atlanta. He is a Trinity Leadership Fellow and is currently pursuing a Doctor in Ministry at Candler School of Theology.

Transcript

Fearful Headlines And Quiet Hope

Matt Babcock 0:00

Every day we're bombarded with stories that make us worried, that make us fearful, that make us doubt ourselves, our neighbors, that make us wonder if anything is really possible. And here God is going, just drop some more seeds and keep walking. I grew up on a farm, right? So as we're planting our gardens, we don't stop. We keep walking. The great strength of Christian faith is that we cannot control it.

Summer Shorts Guest Introduction

Melissa 0:49

Hi everyone, I am Melissa Rau and welcome to For People. Now, Bishop Wright is away for the month of July for continuing education and Sabbath. And so over the next four weeks, we have guest contributors writing his weekly devotion and joining us on For People for our annual Summer Shorts series. This week we have the Reverend Matt Babcock, who serves as vicar at Holy Comforter Episcopal Church and has been an ordained priest for seven years. Welcome, Matt.

Matt Babcock 1:22

Hi, good morning.

Devotion Reading The Reckless Sower

Melissa 1:24

So this week's devotion, you called the Reckless Sower, and it's based off of Matthew chapter 13, verses 1 through 9 and 18 through 23. And it goes like this. If we are good soil. That's the most natural response given that we've been assimilated to measure, compare, and judge ourselves and others. Sometimes our lived experiences leave us wondering if we've done enough. Sometimes we're left wondering if we are enough. So many of us know the rocky ground of hardship, the thorns of poverty, isolation, mental illness, and grief. We know them all too well. And we know the fog of despair that grows from this line of thought. That's precisely why this gospel is so timely. Why we become distracted by the condition of the soil. The sower keeps scattering seeds recklessly. The sower keeps trusting that life will emerge in places no one expects. That's the way of God. Always sowing hope, compassion, and grace without reservation. Our calling isn't to decide where God can work, but to cultivate lives and communities where those gifts can take root. What happens next is not ours to control. Much of the harvest remains a mystery. Hearts soften unexpectedly. Courage appears where fear once lived. Hope breaks through ordinary moments. As we make room for love to flourish, we often discover that God's abundance has been quietly doing its work all along, yielding a harvest far beyond anything we could have imagined. Thanks be to God.

God’s Persistence And Letting Go

Melissa 3:18

Matt, thank you so much for that wonderful devotion.

Matt Babcock 3:21

Oh, I can't believe I wrote that.

Melissa 3:25

That's great. Well, is there something in particular that really resonates with you?

Matt Babcock 3:31

You know, I think that this is one of the most important parables, and that's why it was such a gift to be able to pray over it and and to write about it. I think the thing that stands out to me is the persistence of God in this story. I I mean, even this morning when I looked at it again, it occurred to me that before we get to this totally rich parable, the gospel opens with this story of Jesus has been sitting on the beach telling these people many stories. And I'm thinking about the way that God has been persistent in my life as well. I think that's why it's easy to see this story and to tell something of hope from it. Um I'm I'm thinking about the fact that this is not a story that would have spoken this kind of hope to me as a child. Yeah, I was raised as a Southern Baptist in rural Louisiana, and the stories that I learned as a child, which many of them I carry great um lessons from still today, but most of them would have been peppered with a kind of certainty that I think is not present in much of our gospel, and certainly not present in this one, but I can certainly see how many people would lean on what's good or what's not for the story of soil. Um, is my soil too shallow? Uh are there too many thorns? Whatever you might look at. I mean, I just love the fact that Jesus never stops finding ways through parables to invite us to think differently.

Be The Sower Not The Soil

Melissa 5:12

Yeah, you know, I think a lot of people land with the soil, like we're the soil, either we're good soil or bad soil or rocky or thorny and all the things. And and yet sometimes I wonder, I really appreciate parables because there are a number of different on-ramps in them. And like you said, like God is a sower who sows with abandon, reckless abandon. And I can't help but wonder if maybe that's also an on-ramp for us. What if we are also called to be the sower and not worry about where our seeds land?

Matt Babcock 5:44

Yeah, indeed. I mean, it's it over and over again this idea of how we are called to do something with God, like to be a part of God's reckless playground. I mean, we we're easily distracted by this soil, but the seed is the thing that's falling. And the question is, where are we looking? You know, what is it that we're noticing? And why is it that we're so fixated on what grows and whether it's sustained as opposed to simply noting that something can grow? I mean, that's the story of hope. Uh that's the thing that matters in this moment where every day we're bombarded with stories that make us worried, that make us fearful, that make us doubt ourselves, our neighbors, that make us wonder if anything is really possible. And here God is going, just drop some more seeds and keep walking. I mean, I grew up on a farm, right? So as we're planting our gardens, we don't stop. We keep walking. The point isn't what happens. And I think that's why I talked about it's not ours to control. I mean, the the great strength of Christian faith is that we cannot control it. It's wild. I mean, that is the beauty of our God that says, I've dropped a seed. Now walk with me. Let's see what happens. It's amazing.

Mirror Talk News Noise And Attention

Melissa 7:30

Let's see what happens. I love that. And yet, the seeds always being sown, right? No matter what. And I can't help but wonder like, why is it? I don't know what it is, but I feel like sometimes we decide to clutch the seeds and forget to throw them, right? Because we we are judging, oh, it's just gonna work, it's gonna fail, it's not gonna take root, we're not gonna, and we like, I don't know, we kind of think about it, right?

Matt Babcock 7:57

That's normal, right? Like that's the human condition. Um when you think about everything that we are bombarded with every day. And and I don't know about everyone else, but for me, that begins at the mirror when I walk into my bathroom in the morning. Do I look the way I want to be? Am I rested enough? Am I it all the things that come at us? Then we turn the TV on and we hear the news. What's this is our reality. There's so many things that threaten to move our attention away from the goodness that rests at our soul, the seed that's been there the whole time, the thing that's waiting to burst forth and bring hope into our world. I think this parable is telling us to look there instead of to focus on the things that don't seem right in our world or to focus on the things that seem like they're just too big or just too scary for us to be able to do anything good or anything substantial enough. And God says that that's the wrong thing to pay attention to. Um, and if you didn't hear that, there are some other parables that God told too. I mean, it's just amazing. Uh, just keep listening and there'll be more, which also makes me wonder about what those

Finding Parables On The Sidewalk

Matt Babcock 9:15

parables are. It doesn't escape my notice that the writer of this gospel text doesn't tell us the things that Jesus said before. And that means for me, like there are other ways for me to see this parable. If I can't understand the seed, if I can't understand the soil and the sower, then where are other parables in this world as I'm walking down the sidewalk with my dog? What are the things that I can see and receive as a story of hope given to me from God while I take that next step? It I just think there's something really powerful in that unknown for us today.

Melissa 9:54

I think my favorite line of the whole devotion is right in the middle. The sewer keeps trusting that life will emerge in places no one expects.

Matt Babcock 10:04

Totally.

Melissa 10:06

And I'm curious, Matt, you know, how do you have an example by any chance? And we can Yeah. I I I'm curious if you've seen life occur in places that you haven't expected if you have a real life story.

Matt Babcock 10:22

Well, you know, one of the gifts that I have as being vicar of Holy Comforter is that I get the privilege of walking with the people of the Friendship Center of Atlanta every

Hope From The Friendship Center Of Atlanta

Matt Babcock 10:32

day. And that means that most of the people that I have the privilege of doing ministry with are people that live with multiple and complex needs. Many of them have diagnosed conditions that they've lived with their entire life. They struggle with uh an intimate knowledge of poverty that I couldn't begin to understand myself. And they show up. They show up over and over again. And and these are folks for whom the world has largely ignored, or are determined that their value means nothing. And and they have so much to say always. It's one of my favorite things about this mighty parish that I get to do work with is that they understand the scripture. They understand the story of God's hope and they speak it out loud. They do it during sermons. If I if I don't ask them a question and wait, they're gonna bump in and they're gonna speak over me until they are heard. And that is a claiming of faith. That is a hope that is unexpected. Um, and and as I work with them, one of the things that we have been having the great privilege of doing is moving from parish to parish to tell the story once a month. And we bring members of the Friendship Center, parishioners of Holy Comforter as well, um, and they have told the most amazing stories of identity not being a diagnosis. And they are words of freedom for me as well, because when I think about the limited resources that we have to address the needs that they have, it's overwhelming. And time and again, they continue to show us through their art and through their literal growing in their garden and through yoga and through conversation and meals that there is a hope that's deeper than our fear. That's so unexpected. Um, before I walked through this door, I had so many um preconceived notions about what life in ministry might look like here. Uh I'm continually blown away by the faith of these people in the depth of their love and their hope for a world that they wish to live in and they wish for other people, not just for themselves. Um, it's so powerful, and there's nothing more Christian than that. I mean, thanks be to God, one day maybe I'll be a little bit more like them. I mean, that's the hope.

A Teenager Feels God For Once

Melissa 13:15

You know what? I've been to Holy Comforter with my own youth group on mission, and it is absolutely a special place. But the best story, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna make it about me. My son was always, I don't know, he was kind of in a rough spot, but he went on that mission trip and it was it was that parish, it was Holy Comforter and the work and the people, the people who were there who touched my son so deeply that he said for the first time as a teenager, I don't know that I've ever been able to feel God. But he's like, But I felt God for the first time, and it was like as a mom, I was like, you know, crying. Yeah, but it is indeed a special, special place. So thank you so much for your ministry, Matt there.

Matt Babcock 14:03

Yeah, it's my great pleasure.

Melissa 14:05

Thank you so much for your your wise words, your devotion. Thanks be to God is really the only thing to say, yeah.

Matt Babcock 14:12

Indeed, thanks be to God.

Melissa 14:15

Thanks, Matt, and thank you, friends, for tuning into For People. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Bishop Rob Wright or by visiting www.forpeople.digital.

Thanks Be To God And Closing

Melissa 14:25

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