Scott Hoezee

A year ago I was sitting at my kitchen table face to face with a stack of 40-some sermons, each based on one of the Psalms.   In many of those sermons students struggled to write grace-filled, Gospel-saturated sermons on passages…

First, sorry for the overly alliterative title.  But for this post, those words really are the apt ones to invoke!  Like many people, I have been eagerly awaiting the next volume in biographer Robert Caro's series "The Years of Lyndon…

Since this post will appear early in Holy Week 2012, my thoughts have turned toward questions of the meaning of Jesus' sacrifice.   In a seminary class the other day in a discussion on how to preach the Minor Prophets (what…

For various reasons across the last year or two, I have been involved in some faith-and-science conversations.  One topic that has come up often of late centers on the "image of God" in humanity--there are lots of questions (as there…

There are lots of reasons to like the Reformed standard of The Heidelberg Catechism but among the reasons I like it is the positive spin it puts on The Ten Commandments.  In particular I like how the Catechism slides from…

As someone who grew up in the Christian Reformed Church through the 1970s and 80s, I knew virtually nothing about the Season of Lent until my college years.  Back in Ada, Michigan, and at the Ada CRC, we could not…

There have been a few posts here on The Twelve about Mormonism, including two fine recent postings by Jamie Smith and Steve Mathonnet-Vanderwell (with Jamie's piece even being picked up by Andrew Sullivan in his blog).  If you haven't read…

The month of January for me has been mostly consumed with my teaching the course "Intersections of Theology and Science" here at Calvin Theological Seminary.   Hence my thoughts have been trafficking all month in the always fascinating, but sometimes complex,…

(Note: This post was actually my sermon-starter idea for the January 8 Lectionary text of Genesis 1:1-5 but it can serve as my meditation as 2011 ended and 2012 has now begun). “The first day.”   That is how this Year…

"A good sermon turns even known truth into profound realization."   That is one of many striking lines in a fine New York Times Book Review essay by Marilynne Robinson published on Christmas Day.  Robinson's point in the piece was to…