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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.
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
Commentary
Lent 1C
At first blush Psalm 91 seems an odd choice for the Year C First Sunday in Lent. After all, Psalm 91 is one of those psalms that makes lavish promises as to the constant well-being and prospering of anyone who makes God their refuge and strength. If you are on God’s side, God is constantly…
Time, Chance, and God
Written Sermon
Lucky. That is not a word which Christians like very much. Our mothers taught us to resist referring to a certain person as just being “lucky” in life. Most of us were taught to avoid thinking that once we got out of college, we’d “try out our luck” at a certain profession. We prefer to…
Psalm 99
Commentary
Transfiguration Sunday C
Psalm 99 might seem to be a better fit for the Reign of Christ Sunday later this year than for Transfiguration Sunday. There is really nothing in the accounts of Christ’s transfiguration that point to God—or Christ Jesus—as King. But that is what Psalm 99 is all about. Probably if we wanted to make a…
Psalm 37:1-11, 39-40
Commentary
Epiphany 7C
Psalm 37 is a little bit all over the place. The Lectionary would have us skip 27 of this poem’s 40 verses but to preach well on this psalm, we need to at least read through verses 12-38. And if we do so, then we see that Psalm 37 is at once highly realistic and…
Psalm 1
Commentary
Epiphany 6C
The Book of Psalms begins with a beatitude. But unlike Jesus’s well-known Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount that begins in Matthew 5, Psalm 1’s beatitude is not for what a person is or for what a person does. Instead, this blessing concerns what a given person does not do. Principally a person is…
Psalm 138
Commentary
Epiphany 5C
The honesty of the psalms is always refreshing. In the case of Psalm 138, such honesty comes through most especially in the final line of the poem. Mostly this psalm brims with enthusiasm for God. Whole-hearted praise begins the psalm followed by joyful observations about how he will continue to worship God, how God always…
Psalm 71:1-6
Commentary
Epiphany 4C
Even just the half-dozen verses that the Lectionary selects for us from the larger text of Psalm 71 capture the essence of most of the 150 psalms in the Hebrew Psalter. Consider all of what is spoken and expressed in the span of just these few verses: Images of God as refuge and rock and…
Psalm 19
Commentary
Epiphany 3C
Law. Decrees. Statues. Commands. Precepts. Once the writer of Psalm 19 switched his focus from the wonder of creation to the wonder of God’s law, he dug deep into his Hebrew thesaurus to use about every synonym for “law” as he could find. But he used this variety of terms not merely because he did…
Psalm 36:5-10
Commentary
Epiphany 2C
Psalm 36 contains a striking line about God: “In your light we see light.” It is a curious turn of phrase, seeming very nearly tautological. What does it mean that we can only see light when we are in the midst of some other light? It may be a way of saying that we cannot…
Psalm 29
Commentary
Epiphany 1C
This is the Sunday to observe things related to the Baptism of Jesus and each of the four assigned Year C readings tie in with baptism. The Acts 8 passage is a little bit of an outlier in that no water is involved but instead baptism is mentioned even as the Holy Spirit gets poured…
About Scott Hoezee