About Scott Hoezee

Scott-Hoezee

Rev. Scott E. Hoezee (Hoe-zay) is an ordained pastor in the Christian Reformed Church in North America and has served two congregations. He was the pastor of Second Christian Reformed Church in Fremont, Michigan, from 1990-1993. From 1993-2005 he was the Minister of Preaching and Administration at Calvin CRC in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In the spring of 2005 Scott accepted the Seminary’s offer to become the first Director of the Center for Excellence in Preaching. He has also been a member of the Pastor-Theologian Program sponsored by the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey, where he was pastor-in-residence in the fall of 2000. From 2001-2011 Scott served on the editorial board of Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Thought and was co-editor of that journal from 2005-2011. He blogs regularly for The Reformed Journal and along with Darrell Delaney is the co-host of the Groundwork radio and podcast program.

Rev. Hoezee is married to Rosemary Apol and they have two children. He enjoys birdwatching, snorkeling, and exploring the beauties and wonders of God’s great creation.

Rev. Hoezee is the author of several books including The Riddle of Grace (1996), Flourishing in the Land (1996), Remember Creation (1998), Speaking as One: A Look at the Ecumenical Creeds (1997), Speaking of Comfort: A Look at the Heidelberg Catechism (1998), and Proclaim the Wonder: Preaching Science on Sunday (2003), Grace Through Every Generation (2007), Actuality: Real Life Stories for Sermons That Matter (2014)and Why We Listen To Sermons (2018).

Scott Hoezee has been writing sermon commentaries for the CEP website since its inception in July 2005.

Easter: Soar We Now

Written Sermon

Anyone who has ever taken a class in physics may remember Newton’s laws of motion. Even if you’ve never taken physics or specifically had to memorize Newton’s laws, you’re probably familiar with the basics. One law is the simple observation that an object at rest tends to stay at rest unless some outside force acts…

Explore

Easter: Enough

Written Sermon

Dan Brown’s suspense novel, The DaVinci Code, was a New York Times #1 bestseller for over a year, selling in the end millions of copies.  As some of you may recall from The DaVinci Code, Mary Magdalene occupies a central place in the narrative.  Yes, the same Mary who figures in so importantly in the…

Explore

Palm Sunday: Salvation’s Hospitality

Written Sermon

In the summer of 1991 my wife and I spent some time traveling in Germany. One of our stops was a two-day visit to a pastor and his wife in Wittenberg. At that time, the fall of the Berlin Wall was still a very recent event. What had been the communist-dominated East Germany was still…

Explore

Psalm 27:1, 4-9

Commentary

Epiphany 3A

C.S. Lewis said somewhere that when you add it all up and consider it all together, in the end we would find that our prayer life is also our autobiography. Who we are, where we’ve been, the situations we’ve faced, the fears that nag us, and not a few of the core characteristics of who…

Explore

Isaiah 9:1-4

Commentary

Epiphany 3A

The Common Lectionary’s choice to cut off this reading at verse 4 feels artificial.  It’s like asking someone to break off singing midway through verse 2 of “Joy to the World.”  It doesn’t work.  You both want to finish the song and anyway you hear the song finish up in your head even if you…

Explore

Isaiah 49:1-7

Commentary

Epiphany 2A

In the Servant Songs in this part of Isaiah the Lord God alternates speaking with the Servant himself also making remarks or comments.  In this passage we hear from both the God who pre-ordained the Servant long before he was born and from the Servant himself.  From God’s side we get high-flying confidence.  From the…

Explore

Psalm 40:1-11

Commentary

Epiphany 2A

Did David (or whoever wrote this psalm) write it backwards?  You can divide Psalm 40 rather neatly into two halves (though most of the second half is left out by the Lectionary).  The first ten or so verses are full of confidence and gratitude for God’s deliverance.  As usual in the psalms, we cannot detect…

Explore

Psalm 29

Commentary

Epiphany 1A

Psalm 29 is an ode to a thunderstorm. But this poem is not just that.  The primary aim here is to move through the storm to the Lord of the storm, to the King of Creation, to the one, only true, sovereign God: Yahweh. As such, Psalm 29, for all its lyrical and poetic beauty,…

Explore

Isaiah 42:1-9

Commentary

Epiphany 1A

Throughout the “Servant Songs” in this part of Isaiah, despite the focus on the Servant, there is no question who is really in charge and calling all the shots.  The Servant has work to do and will achieve that work to a stunning degree of effectiveness.  Nothing short of the bringing of justice to all…

Explore

Isaiah 63:7-9

Commentary

Christmas 1A

We have all seen this on the walls of someone’s house.  Perhaps it is done in counted-cross-stitch.  Perhaps it is done in calligraphy.  But we have seen these framed squares or rectangles hanging in a living room and containing a Bible verse shorn of its context.  Most of the time this works fine—the verse functions…

Explore