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Christ Community Chapel is a church in Hudson, OH, that invites people to reimagine life because of Jesus. Learn more about us at ccchapel.com.
John 2:1–12
On the third day
there was a wedding at Cana
in Galilee,
and the mother of Jesus was there.
Jesus also was invited to the wedding
with his disciples.
When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus
said to him, they have no wine.
And Jesus said to her, woman,
what does this have to do with me?
My hour has not yet come.
His mother said to the servants,
do whatever he tells you.
Now there were six stone
water jars there for the Jewish rites
of purification,
each holding 20 or 30 gallons.
Jesus said to the servants,
fill the jars with water.
And they filled them up to the brim.
And he said to them, now draw some out,
and take it to the master of the feast.
So they took it.
When the master of the feast
tasted the water,
now become wine,
and did not know where it came from.
Though the servants who had drawn
the water knew the master of the feast,
called to the bridegroom, and said to him,
everyone serves the good wine first.
And when people have drunk freely,
then the poor wine.
But you have kept the good wine until now.
This the first of his signs
Jesus did at Cana in Galilee.
And manifested his glory.
And his disciples believed in him.
After this
he went down to Capernaum with his mother
and his brothers and his disciples.
And they stayed there for a few days.
Well, good morning and
welcome to the weekend here at Christ
Community Chapel.
My name is Zach.
I'm one of the pastors here, and I'm
so glad
that we get to be part of your weekend.
2026,
if you've been coming, you know this,
if this is your first time,
let me let me introduce you to this.
2026 for us is a year of more life.
That's our annual theme.
We take that from Jesus in John 10:10
who said, "I've come
so that they may have life and life
more abundantly."
Jesus told us his mission was life,
even more life for all of us.
So we're taking his word at that.
We're taking him up on that.
We're asking him for more life
in our individual stories,
and our marriages,
and our families, and our careers,
and for us as a church,
asking for more of what God has for us.
January was about getting
you ready for that.
And now, as we head into our ten week
spring series,
we'll be looking at the Gospel of John
and seven "I am" statements that Jesus makes
because when Jesus tells us he came
so that we might have more
life, he's not telling us to try harder
or to be better.
He's saying that if we will go to him,
if we will go through him,
we'll have more life.
So, we're going to look at the ways
he invites us into relationship with him
and how those ways lead to more life.
But before we do
that, we're going to take this week
to kind of kick start that series
and to make sure we don't miss one
really important point,
and that is that Jesus wants more life
for us in all areas of our lives,
in all moments of our lives,
not just the big ones.
So if you have your Bible,
would you open it up to John chapter two?
If you want to use a Bible here
in the room or over in East Hall,
you can grab one in the pew
in front of you
or in the back of East Hall
on page 845.
Or if you're more comfortable,
it'll be on the screen behind me.
But, as we get ready to look at John two,
let me hold out to you an outline
I'm going to use to guide our time
together.
Four simple points and they go like this
I want to talk about little moments,
layers,
looking for more, and leaning
in. Little moments,
layers, looking for more, and leaning in.
All right, let's start with the first one.
Little moments.
I don't know if you've ever
had the experience of reading a book
that is turned into a movie,
but if you have, you know that
the way a book tells a story
and the way a movie tells a story is
what are wildly different,
they have to be, movies,
in my mind, really
shouldn't be much longer than two hours.
If I need three bathroom
breaks over the course of a movie,
that's a miniseries, not a movie.
But when you're telling a story
in two hours,
you have to go from one big moment
to the next, right?
You don't really have time to slow down.
You don't really have time for detail.
But when you're reading a book,
books are full of the details that movies
leave out.
That's why if you ever read a book
that gets turned into a movie,
you will probably find yourself
saying the book was better.
It's because the book took more time.
You you felt closer to the characters.
You understood the plot.
I think our lives work that way.
What I mean
is there's a way of telling you my story.
That is the movie version.
Like, if you said, hey, Pastor Zach,
how did you come to be the senior pastor
at Christ Community Chapel?
And assuming that's an honest question
and what you don't mean is why
did they ever choose you,
then I would tell
you a story that would start 20 years ago.
I would talk about feeling called
in the ministry of getting married,
going to seminary, being a youth
and college pastor in Illinois, planting
a church in Cleveland,
meeting Pastor Joe, coming on staff here,
growing and developing in both character
and and ability and love for this place.
I mean, that was 20 years in 20s, right?
That's the movie version of my life.
But of course,
there's a book version to life
really isn't one big moment after a next.
Instead, life really tends
to be more about the little moments
the regular, the innocuous, the non epic.
That's why it's so interesting to me
that in the Gospel of John,
which by the way,
if you're new to Christianity, new to
the Bible, you're wanting, you're curious,
you're wanting to start reading the Bible,
I think, where should I start?
I think the Gospel of John
is the best place.
It's an incredibly intimate look at Jesus.
I think you're going to love it.
You should definitely try it.
But the Gospel of John starts in chapter
one with one of the most
theologically dense chapters
in all of the Bible.
It tells us that Jesus is God,
God in the flesh, that he came
so that we might know who God is
and how to have a relationship with God.
I mean, it is a beautiful, rich passage.
And then in the very next chapter, as John
turns his attention
to the public ministry of Jesus,
he goes to
what is really
not that exciting of a story.
It's not a big moment.
Nobody's life is changed.
Nobody goes from blind to being able
to see crippled for to being able to walk.
No one's entire life
trajectory is altered.
It's just a wedding.
Let me read it to you.
I want you to just see how ordinary it is.
John.
Chapter two, verses
one through three says this.
On the third day
there was a wedding at Cana
in Galilee,
and the mother of Jesus was there.
And Jesus also was invited
to the wedding with his disciples.
And when the wine ran out, the mother of
Jesus said to him, they have no wine.
I mean, yeah, that's not great, right?
You you throw a big wedding.
And in this culture,
weddings were multiple day affairs.
So if this is day one, that's not great.
It's not great to be out of wine.
But I mean, this is not a cancer
diagnosis.
This is not a marriage counseling session.
No one's child is dying.
There's nothing epic about this story.
Why would John go from one of the most
theologically rich chapters
in the entire Bible into the ordinary?
Well, really, for this simple reason,
what John is telling us
is that when we talk about more life,
we don't just mean more life after death,
although we do mean that we don't just
mean more life in oncology ward,
or in the marriage
counseling session,
or with with the epic moments of life.
Although we do mean
that when John is writing about more life,
the more life Jesus brings,
he means more life.
In the little moments,
in the ordinary
days, in the nooks
and crannies of our lives.
You see, the reason
this is so important is because no matter
how little spirituality you have,
no matter how little religious background
or little awareness of Christianity,
in the big moments of life, you will pray.
You'll try, right? You might.
You might even pray something like,
I don't even know if you're real.
I don't even know if you're out there.
But I just lost my job.
I just found out I have cancer.
So if you're out there at all,
if this even works at all,
could you please help?
That will be natural.
But the reverse is also true.
I don't care
how much spirituality you have,
how much of a religious background, how
long you've called yourself a Christian.
Most of us leave
God out of the little moments of life.
We assume he doesn't get involved.
He doesn't care.
We shouldn't bother him.
But this story says that Jesus started
his public ministry in the little moments.
And this matters because life is made up
really of little moments,
not big ones.
It matters
if we don't think God cares about them.
Let me show you that.
That's my second point.
Not just little moments, but but layers.
I want you to see.
The little moments are really not
they're really not little.
There's a Christian therapist
who I like to read named Dan Allander,
and kind of his whole stick
is that the movie version of your life?
The story you tell
people is not actually what shaped you.
The stories that shape us
are the ones we remember,
and we don't even really know why
we remember them.
The stories we remember. But they're not.
They're not significant, really.
But for some reason, they stick with us.
Like, let me tell you, one of mine,
when I was in the second grade,
I had the world's worst teacher, Mrs.
Watson.
I remember her being very old,
although I was in the second grade,
so she could have been 26.
I hope not, because I don't want
this story to get back to her.
But if it does, Mrs. Watson,
you know who you are.
You know what you did.
And so she wanted to get us reading.
We're in the second grade.
She wants to get reading.
So she introduced a reading competition.
Whoever could read
the most books would get a prize.
And I like to read.
And I also am, you know,
I like to achieve, and I like to win.
So about halfway through the year,
I had read 175 books,
and the next kid had read six,
which I realize now as an adult, kind of
defeated the whole point of the contest.
But I was in second grade,
so I just kept reading.
You know,
you never know. They could catch me.
So I just kept reading.
By the end of the year, we never really
talked about the program or the contest.
I mean, on the wall in the school,
there was like a little book
meter thing and,
you know, I had a couple extra
poster boards just for me.
And at the end of the year,
I had read like 330 books,
and the next kid wasn't close,
but she never talked about it.
So on the last day of school, I raised my
little second grade hand and I say, Mrs.
Watson, and she said something
probably like, what?
And I
said, hey,
you know, remember the reading contest?
I mean, I'm not sure.
Looks like it looks like I won.
You said something about a prize,
and she goes, oh, yeah, fine.
And she goes behind her desk,
and she must have raised horses or
or rode horses or something,
because behind her desk
she had a whole row of,
like, horse trophies.
So she grabbed one of the horse trophies
and ripped the name plate off.
So the all that was on
the front was like dried glue.
And she handed it to me
and she said, here's your prize.
And I was crushed.
I can I can literally see the trophy
right now in my hand,
looking and realizing in that moment
I had done something wrong,
something you know, it wasn't.
And and I sat with that for the rest of
the day with my little second grade heart.
And then I get in the car
for the family member who's picking me up,
and they can see I'm crushed, like,
what happened.
And I'm telling them the story,
and I show them my trophy.
And then I remember the
family member just laughing.
They thought it was hilarious.
I didn't.
That was 35 years ago.
I remember it like it was yesterday
because, you know, see,
that was a moment where I was learning
some adults don't care about you.
And achievement
isn't going to change that.
And in my family,
it didn't matter if you were crushed,
if it was funny
35 years ago.
And here's the thing.
If I were telling you the movie version
of my life, that would never make it in.
But it lives with me.
You see, little moments aren't little,
are they?
To carry layers?
John two is like that.
Big deal. Wedding's
going to run out of wine.
Well, except for the wedding.
Is for a little girl who grew up to be
a woman who's dreamed her entire
life about this wedding.
No one's going to remember her dress
or the flowers or how she look.
They're just going to remember
that they ran out of wine.
You know, in this, in this culture,
the bridegroom, the soon to be husband
and his family paid for the wedding.
So if you're the bridegroom's
dad, all everyone's going to remember is
you didn't work hard enough
or save enough or earn enough
to keep the party going.
You're going to carry the story with you
for the rest of your life.
You see, the problem is, is little moments
aren't actually little.
And if God doesn't care about them,
then what will come to believe is
and you know this before I even say it,
he doesn't actually care about me.
How many of us are carrying a
kind of quiet resentment towards God?
A kind of low level hum of anger.
Not from a big moment where he failed us,
but from the aggregation of little moments
where we didn't think
he could be bothered.
But in a life of little moments, in a life
of little moments that carry layers.
If God isn't paying attention,
if he can't be bothered,
if he isn't involved.
Then how could I ever love him at best,
if I had relationship with him?
At best, it would be like having a
relationship with a distant family member.
I see at Christmas
where we pretend to know each other.
We pretend to love each other,
but we both know we're going
to go back to our own lives
for another year.
Is that your relationship with God?
If it is the.
Don't you see why John starts at a wedding
that's out of wine?
It's so crucial to us church.
If 2026 is going to be a year of more life
that we don't hear, more
life is for the hospital or more
life is for the therapy room or more.
Life is for the big moments of life.
Because what this story is telling us
is in the little moments,
the regular moments, the innocuous moments
God wants more.
Let me show you how to get it.
Not just little moments, not just layers,
but here looking for more love, Mary.
In this story.
I don't know if you picked up on it.
Let me read it to you.
John, chapter two, verses three and four.
When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus
said to him, they have no wine.
Then Jesus said to her, woman,
I just want to stop for a second
and say,
that's a terrible English translation.
I don't want some
guy going, it's biblical.
Yeah,
yeah, some of you are laughing
because you know who you are.
A better translation of
that would be ma'am.
Okay?
We just don't have a good English
equivalent north of Kentucky.
That's why they translated that woman.
Okay?
And Jesus said to her, ma'am,
what does this have to do with me?
My hour has not yet come.
And his mother said to the servants,
do whatever he tells you.
So they're out of wine at the wedding,
and Mary knows instantly what to do.
She goes to Jesus
and she says, they don't have any wine.
They don't have any wine?
No. So interesting to me.
Why did she know to go to Jesus?
I can't help but think over the 30 years
of Jesus life at this point
he had done stuff like this.
Like Mary had said, hey Jesus, I didn't
get enough rice at the grocery store.
I could do an online pick up or,
you know, you could help a mother out.
But she doesn't even flinch.
She doesn't blink.
She goes right to Jesus. They say,
hey there.
She says they're out of wine. She knows.
Listen to me, listen to me.
She knows he will care.
You see, the
the first thing that Mary is teaching us
is the way to have more life in the little
moments of your life is expectation.
She assumes he will care.
She assumes it will matter.
She knows the bride matters to Jesus.
She knows the bridegroom matters to Jesus.
She knows little moments matter to Jesus.
Even when she goes to
and says they're out of wine.
And he goes like,
look, it's not really time yet.
I don't know what you want from me.
She just ignores him, turns to the
servants, said, just do what it says.
How many of us is the biggest obstacle
to more life
in the little moments of our life
that we have no expectation?
But you see, Mary is telling us
that this party could have ended
and everyone would have gone home
and they would have said, it's sad, but
what are you going to do?
Sometimes you run out of wine,
and they would have missed the fact
that there was someone in their midst
who could have blown their mind.
Look what he does, by the way.
You know, in this moment, Mary goes,
Jesus says, they're out of wine.
He could have said, it's
not really my deal.
You know, I came to save sinners.
Little more important,
right?
He could have said, all right, fine.
Boom. Here's a box from Drug Mart.
Some wine is better than no wine.
I guess.
But that isn't what he does.
Look here, John, chapter two, verse,
verse six.
Pick it up now.
There were six stone water jars there
for the Jewish rites of purification,
each holding 20 or 30 gallons.
And Jesus said to the servants,
fill the jars with water.
And they filled them up to the brim.
And he said to them, now draw some out,
and take it to the master of the feast.
So they took it.
And when the master of the feast
tasted the water, now become wine,
and they did not know where it come from.
Although the servants who had drawn
the water knew
the master of the feast
called the bridegroom.
And he said to him,
everyone, serve the good wine first.
And when people have drunk freely,
then the poor wine.
But you have kept the good wine until now.
Jesus doesn't just give them wine,
he gives them 120
to 180 gallons
of the best wine they've ever had.
180 gallons
of the best wine they've ever had.
They drink it and they go, whoa, whoa,
is this from Napa?
The bridegroom is like,
I'm not paying for this, right?
It blows their mind with how good it is.
Listen. Listen to me.
Mary knows this will matter to Jesus,
but it doesn't matter to him a little bit.
It matters to him.
180 gallons of the best wine worth.
Friends, listen to me.
We box God
out of the little moments of our lives
because we don't think we matter.
We don't think it will be important
enough.
We don't think we're significant enough.
Meanwhile, God is saying,
if you would just come to me
in expectation,
you would have a 180 gallons of love.
We cannot have more life in 2026
if we assume God doesn't care
about the little moments.
And I'm not just talking about wine
and money and stuff.
Listen, little second grade, Zach,
and this is not a joke.
It's not a praise.
You don't laugh and feel bad about it.
Little second grade Zach in the car
didn't need ice cream.
He didn't need a better
trophy. He needed a hug.
Whatever it is God knows that you need
in the little moments of life,
he says, come to me.
Come to me
in expectation.
Here's the second thing. No fourth point.
Not just little moments.
Not just layers.
Not just looking for more. Listen.
Number four, lean in. We got to lean in.
Mary says to the servants, do verse four.
Do whatever he tells you.
You see, there are two ways of missing
more in this story of missing Jesus.
One is assuming he doesn't care
the obstacle of expectation.
But the other way of missing Jesus is to
is to not invite him to take charge.
Because you see, if they had come to Jesus
and they had said, we're out of wine.
And he had said, okay, here's
what I want you to do.
I want you to take six jars,
fill them up with water.
I don't want you to taste the water,
smell the water, look at the water.
Just scoop some out, take it to the master
of the feast and have him drink it.
Which I assume means if they had filled up
three jars or one jar, or five
jars, if they had tasted it themselves,
they would have missed out.
Here's what this story is telling us.
God wants to infuse your regular life
and your big moment and eternity
with more life. But to get it,
you're going to have to
invite him to take charge.
If 2026 is going to be
a year of more life, it's
also going to be a year of expectation.
It's also going to be a year of surrender.
Are you ready for that?
But of course, you're surrendering.
Listen, you're
surrendering to a God who loves you.
Verse 11 says this kind of the crescendo
of the passage,
this the first of his signs
Jesus did at Cana in Galilee,
and manifested his glory,
and his disciples believed in him.
Because you see, this miracle.
This miracle doesn't change anyone's life.
Not really,
but it points to one that will.
Because the guy who turned water into wine
is going to turn our sin
into righteousness.
He's going to carry my sin to the cross.
He's going to come up under the anger
and judgment of God.
He's going to exhaust that.
He's going to die under the weight of it,
that he's going to raise from the dead.
And ascend into heaven.
And he's going to say to me,
if you come to me in expectation
that you can be forgiven,
and if you come to me in the surrender
of allowing me to be Lord,
then I will lead you through
the little moments
and the big moments into eternity forever.
You see, Jesus is telling us
God wants more life
in eternity, more life in the big moments,
more life in the little moments.
And the way you get it is not by trying
harder or wanting it more or being better.
It's by going to him.
We're
going to see throughout the Gospel of John
that Jesus will say he has more for us.
He'll say, for instance,
are you dissatisfied?
I am the bread of life.
I can fill you up.
Are you confused and scared?
I am the light of the world.
I can give you clarity.
Do you feel like you're on the outside
looking in?
I am the door.
Do you feel like you're.
You're lost in your.
And you're rudderless
and you need a leader.
I am the good shepherd.
Do you feel like you're.
You're dry and there's no life in you?
I am the vine and you are the branches.
You see, Jesus is saying, come to me.
In expectation and surrender.
And I will fill your little moments.
I don't know what story
you're carrying from the second.
Great.
But I do know.
That if you feel
that that story is telling you
that God doesn't care.
It's a lie.
And God was so determined
for you to know that
that he started the Gospel of John
with a story
about a wedding that was out of wine.
We pray for us, father God,
thank you so much for a story
about regular life.
It is almost easier for us to believe
that you will be there for us
in the big moments of life,
it's almost easier
for us to believe
you'll be there in eternity
than it is to believe that you care
about a random Sunday in Northeast Ohio
and one single person sitting in a pew.
But you do.
Holy spirit,
lead us to expectation and surrender.
We want more life this year and beyond,
and every little area of our lives.
For your glory and for our good.
In Jesus name we pray. Amen.