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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.
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
Commentary
Proper 9A
I’m sure they had their reasons. I refer to the folks who put together the readings for the Revised Common Lectionary. I’m sure they had their reasons to leap-frog over verses 20-24 but in so doing, they created something of an irony (if not something of an exegetical faux pas). Granted, Jesus’ rant against various…
Romans 7:15-25a
Commentary
Proper 9A
Very few, if any, Christians in history have ever claimed that by virtue of being a Christian, they had become sinless. Very few, if any, have ever gone through the “Confession and Assurance” portion of the weekly liturgy merely twiddling their thumbs in that they believed that part of the service did not apply seeing…
Matthew 10:40-42
Commentary
Proper 8A
“I have always relied on the kindness of strangers.” That is the famous closing line spoken by the character Blanche DuBois in the play A Streetcar Named Desire. In Matthew 10 Jesus basically tells the disciples that they, too, must rely on the kindness of strangers when they go out to proclaim the good news…
Romans 6:12-23
Commentary
Proper 8A
“The wages of sin is death.” So proclaims any number of homespun billboards I have driven past over the years. Not a few church signs have sported this just-less-than good news, too. It’s the kind of thing non-Christians expect to hear from finger-wagging preachers or other pious purveyors of the Gospel. It’s what vaguely crazed…
Matthew 10:24-39
Commentary
Proper 7A
John Donne was a seventeenth century author, poet, and preacher. In his poems and sermons Donne penned a bevy of striking lines. “Death, be not proud . . . Death, thou shalt die!” “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” “No man is an island, entire of itself.” Strikingly…
Romans 6:1b-11
Commentary
Proper 7A
Be who you are. That is Paul’s most basic message in Romans 6. Paul tells us who we are and so reminds us how we are to live from now on as a result of our true identity. Romans 6 is a landmark passage. Scholars can write (and have written) whole books on any one…
Matthew 9:35-10:8
Commentary
Proper 6A
Be careful what you pray for—you might just get it! You can see a little of the dynamic of this bit of proverbial wisdom in the pivot from Matthew 9 to Matthew 10. At the end of Matthew 9, Jesus tells the disciples to pray that more workers would be sent out into the ripe…
Romans 5:1-8
Commentary
Proper 6A
By now many of us have heard about the recent flap regarding the well-known contemporary hymn “In Christ Alone.” Seems a certain hymnal committee wanted to formalize what a number of congregations had already done informally on their own and that is swap out language about how on the cross “the wrath of God was…
Matthew 28:16-20
Commentary
Trinity Sunday A
Worship and Doubt. Apparently they have been together from the beginning. As Rev. Leonard Vander Zee pointed out one time in a sermon, the Bible is eminently realistic about such things. Matthew did not sugarcoat this for us, did not try to place shining halos behind each disciple’s head as they all stood on this…
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Commentary
Trinity Sunday A
“I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you . . . Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood, Martin Luther King, Jr.” Those are among the closing words of the landmark “Letter from a Birmingham…
About Scott Hoezee