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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.
Luke 9:28-36
Commentary
Last Epiphany C
Not for nothing are they called “Mountaintop Experiences”! In the Bible, when a story takes us up to a mountaintop, it’s a fair bet that something dramatic is going to happen—indeed, it’s a fair bet that something deeply revelatory is going to happen. Luke 9 is no exception. But the drama up there on that…
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Commentary
Last Epiphany C
Setting aside Donald Trump’s recent exigetically disastrous and self-serving use of a verse in this week’s Epistle lection, most of us who preach would admit that this is not an easy text to get right. Paul’s second letter to Corinth contains wonderful pockets of now well-known words and images. But weaving in and around those…
Exodus 34:29-35
Commentary
Last Epiphany C
To understand the end of Exodus 34, you need to catch up on two things: the immediate context of this chapter in Exodus and also what happened in the first 9 verses of this 34th chapter, the final effect of which you can read in the Lectionary selection of verses 29-35. First of all, then,…
Luke 4:21-30
Commentary
Epiphany 4C
I confess that I don’t quite understand this passage. Or at least I don’t understand how it turns out. It’s not so much what is contained in this Lectionary snippet of verses 14-21 as in what follows when the people in the synagogue turn on Jesus with a murderous ferocity. After all, Luke 4:15 assures…
Jeremiah 1:4-10
Commentary
Epiphany 4C
My wife mentions this semi-often. For her, it’s a combination of envy and consternation. The issue is vocation, “calling,” and it crops up in conversation between the two of us whenever someone asks me once again to tell my “call story” to be a minister or in case some other preacher—in the course of a…
Luke 4:14-21
Commentary
Epiphany 3C
Suspense! If you stop at verse 21 as the Lectionary would have you to do and hold off on what happens in verses 22 and following next week, then a sermon on this text ends in some suspense as we wait to see how the people will react to what Jesus has just said and…
Nehemiah 8:1-10
Commentary
Epiphany 3C
Let’s just admit that if you preach for a living, then Nehemiah 8 sounds vaguely like a dream come true! Someone preaches and . . . people gobble it up. They love it! They can’t get enough. They are vaguely disappointed that the sermon ended (instead of being relieved as may happen all-too-often in actuality.)…
John 2:1-11
Commentary
Epiphany 2C
Apparently we are going to have to revise our definition of “glory.” Sometimes things happen in life that make us update long-held notions and definitions. It reminds me of the scene from the movie A Beautiful Mind in which the socially inept genius mathematician John Nash (played by Russell Crowe) haltingly proposes to his girlfriend…
Isaiah 62:1-5
Commentary
Epiphany 2C
These first verses of Isaiah 62 are like a geyser erupting in hopefulness and wild abundance. This is like a prophetic fireworks display with a never-ending grand finale as color and light fills the skies, eliciting a long string of “Ooohs” and “Ahhhs” from those seeing the spectacle. This is one of those passages so…
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Commentary
Epiphany 1C
Luke’s substantial narrative powers surely did not all suddenly fail him in this third chapter. So we need a different kind of explanation for the curious way by which Luke frames up this part of the story. Consider: First, we get the odd insertion in verses 19-20 about John’s imprisonment following his finally crossing the…
About Scott Hoezee