Many of us start the new year with grand expectations. We imagine dramatic transformations—losing fifty pounds, landing the dream job, finally getting organized. But here’s what actually happens: We make it three days into our new exercise routine before the alarm goes off at 5:30 AM and we decide sleep is also a form of self-care. We tackle the junk drawer with enthusiasm, only to realize we’ve simply moved the chaos from one drawer to three. The extraordinary changes we envisioned get replaced by very ordinary Tuesday afternoons.
And yet, what if that’s exactly where God meets us? What if transformation doesn’t require dramatic settings or perfect circumstances? What if the ordinary moments—family dinners, neighborhood conversations, even wedding celebrations that run out of wine—are precisely where Jesus does his most extraordinary work?
Today’s scripture takes us to a wedding party in Cana, a small Galilean village. No temple. No synagogue. No religious festival. Just neighbors celebrating, wine running low, and Jesus quietly transforming water into wine. His first miraculous sign happens not on a mountaintop or in Jerusalem’s courts, but at an ordinary community gathering where something has gone embarrassingly wrong. As we welcome new members into our church family today—and as our Confirmation students begin their journey of exploring faith—we discover together how Jesus specializes in making the ordinary extraordinary.
Last week we heard Jesus extend his invitation to those first disciples: “Come and see.” Philip found Nathanael and offered the same invitation—come and see this Jesus who might be the Messiah. Nathanael came skeptical, but Jesus saw him completely and called him into something greater than he imagined. That invitation to “come and see” led them to Cana, to this wedding celebration. Now, having accepted Jesus’ invitation to follow, the disciples are about to witness what happens when the ordinary collides with the divine. They’re learning what it means that the Word became flesh and dwells among us—even at village wedding parties. Our Confirmation students are beginning that same journey today—saying yes to the invitation to come and see who Jesus is.
Every journey of faith starts somewhere—often messy, often uncertain, often more enthusiasm than polish. Picture a kindergarten holiday concert. Children file onto the risers in their carefully chosen outfits—some too fancy, some sporting reindeer antlers that keep slipping sideways. The music teacher gives the opening chord, and chaos erupts in the most beautiful way. Half the kids forget the words and just move their mouths. Several sing enthusiastically but in completely different keys. One boy waves frantically at his grandmother through the entire first verse. Another scratches her nose for what seems like the whole performance.
Objectively, it might seem like a disaster. Yet looking around the audience, you’d see tears streaming down parents’ faces. Grandparents clutching tissues. Dads with phones out, recording every off-key note like it was Carnegie Hall. What transforms that objectively chaotic moment into something extraordinary? Love. When you love someone, you see past the mistakes to the miracle. An ordinary kindergarten concert becomes extraordinary because of who’s performing and how much they matter to you.
That’s what happened at Cana.
Jesus didn’t show up at this wedding as a guest of honor. He came with his mother and his newly-called disciples, probably sitting at one of the back tables. Most people there knew him as the carpenter’s son from Nazareth, not as the Messiah. It was an ordinary village wedding like hundreds of others happening across Galilee that week.
Then the wine ran out. In first-century Jewish culture, this wasn’t just inconvenient—it was catastrophic. Wedding celebrations lasted up to a week, and the groom’s family bore full responsibility for hospitality. Running out of wine meant social shame that would follow the family for years. Every future gathering, every business dealing, every family conversation would include whispered references: “Remember when they ran out of wine?”
Mary noticed the crisis and did something remarkable. She simply stated the problem to Jesus: “They have no wine.” No demand, no detailed plan, just bringing the need to her son. When Jesus hesitated, essentially saying “My time hasn’t come yet,” Mary didn’t argue theology. She turned to the servants with five transformative words: “Do whatever he tells you.”
The servants faced their own moment of trust. Jesus pointed to six massive stone jars used for Jewish purification rituals—each holding twenty to thirty gallons. These weren’t decorative; they represented the old covenant’s emphasis on ritual cleanliness, on becoming pure enough to approach God. Jesus told the servants to fill these jars with water. Not wine. Water. Then came the harder instruction: draw some out and take it to the headwaiter.
Imagine that walk across the wedding courtyard. They’d filled those jars with water moments ago. Now they’re serving it to the person responsible for the entire feast. But something had changed. The headwaiter tasted what they brought and called the groom over, amazed: “You’ve saved the best wine until now.”
Water into wine. The ordinary becoming extraordinary—not by escaping everyday life, but right in the middle of it. As United Methodists, we believe something distinctive about how God meets us. John Wesley taught that God’s grace works through ordinary means—simple practices like prayer, scripture reading, gathering for worship, and sharing meals together. Wesley called these “means of grace,” insisting that God’s extraordinary power flows through ordinary channels. We don’t have to climb mountains or achieve perfection to encounter the divine. God meets us in everyday rhythms.
The wedding at Cana demonstrates this perfectly. Jesus takes ordinary water and ordinary stone jars—vessels meant for routine religious ritual—and transforms them into vehicles of celebration and abundance. This reveals something essential about God’s character: the divine doesn’t avoid the ordinary but inhabits it, redeems it, transforms it. Methodist theology insists that all of life becomes sacred when we recognize God’s presence in it. Your Tuesday afternoon holds as much potential for encountering Christ as Sunday morning worship. The question isn’t where God shows up—God is everywhere—but whether we’re paying attention.
And that’s exactly where we struggle. We live in a culture obsessed with the extraordinary. Social media trains us to curate highlight reels—the exotic vacation, the perfect meal, the major achievement. We scroll through everyone else’s exceptional moments while sitting in our decidedly unexceptional Tuesday afternoon. The message seeps in: ordinary life doesn’t count. Real transformation, real meaning, real encounters with God require something more dramatic than this.
But here in McPherson, most of our lives unfold in profoundly ordinary ways. We drive the same routes to work. We shop at Dillons and Walmart. We attend kids’ activities at the schools. We grab a coffee at Heartbeat, Craft, or Starbucks. We show up for potlucks at church. We sit in waiting rooms at McPherson Hospital. We help neighbors shovel snow, we share garden vegetables in summer, we wave to the same people on our street every evening.
The same is true in our relationships. The marriages that last aren’t built on grand romantic gestures but on thousands of ordinary moments—making coffee for each other, listening after a hard day, choosing patience when you’re tired. The friendships that sustain us aren’t defined by exotic adventures but by showing up consistently—the text that says “thinking of you,” the meal dropped off without fanfare, the presence that doesn’t need to fix anything. The families that flourish aren’t waiting for the perfect vacation but are finding God in the chaos of dinner tables and carpool lines and bedtime routines. Jesus transforms the ordinary moments of our relationships into something sacred when we bring them to him.
Yet these moments feel too small to matter. Too ordinary to be where God works. We keep waiting for something extraordinary to happen before we can really experience transformation or offer something meaningful to the world. We think we need more resources, more time, more talent, more certainty before God can use us. Like those servants at Cana, we look at what we have—just ordinary water, just ordinary lives—and wonder how this could possibly become something beautiful.
Jesus meets us right there, in the ordinary moment. The family dinner where conversation flows. The text message checking on a struggling friend. The decision to show up when you’re tired. The choice to keep trying when everything feels depleted. These aren’t lesser moments waiting for something better. These are exactly where transformation happens.
The good news is that Jesus doesn’t wait for perfect circumstances or extraordinary settings to reveal God’s glory. He shows up at ordinary weddings in small villages. He transforms common water into abundant wine. He takes whatever we bring—our empty jars, our depleted resources, our ordinary moments—and does something beautiful with them.
God’s grace doesn’t work like we expect. We think we need to get ourselves together first, to have something impressive to offer. But the servants at Cana didn’t have wine to offer—they only had water. Mary didn’t have a solution to propose—she only had a problem to name. The disciples didn’t have proof of who Jesus was—they only had an invitation they’d accepted to come and see. And yet Jesus worked with exactly what they brought. To our Confirmation students beginning this journey: you don’t need all the answers. You just need curiosity and willingness to explore. To those joining our church family today: you don’t need to arrive with impressive spiritual credentials. You bring yourself—your questions, your hopes, your ordinary life—and Jesus does something beautiful with it.
This is how God’s kingdom operates. We don’t have to manufacture extraordinary faith or dramatic circumstances. We simply bring our ordinary lives, our honest struggles, our real resources—however inadequate they seem—and God’s transforming grace goes to work. The same Christ who turned water into wine continues transforming our scarcity into abundance, our ordinary into extraordinary, our emptiness into fullness. You don’t need to become extraordinary. You need to let the extraordinary God inhabit your ordinary life.
So what does that look like practically? As United Methodists, we make five promises when we join the church: to support the church with our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness. This week, we focus on prayers—talking with God—and presence—actively participating in the faith community. The servants at Cana trusted and obeyed without seeing the outcome. We practice the same trust in ordinary moments.
Here’s how to live this out:
Name one ordinary moment each day where you’ll look for God’s presence. It might be your morning coffee, your commute, folding laundry, or a work meeting. Pause for ten seconds and pray: “God, show me what you’re doing here.”
Bring one depleted area to Jesus in prayer. What feels empty or exhausted in your life right now? Name it honestly, like Mary did. Ask God to fill what’s running dry.
Do one small act of service this week. Like the servants who simply obeyed, take one concrete step to help someone else—even if it feels insignificant.
Consider joining a Grace Group during Lent for accountability, growth, and encouragement as you practice seeing God in ordinary moments with others.
Remember where we started? The kindergarten concert was chaos. The wedding at Cana faced disaster. Both became extraordinary because love transformed how people saw them. God looks at your ordinary life—your Tuesday afternoons, your empty places, your small obediences—with that same transforming love. Whether you’ve followed Jesus for decades or you’re just starting to ask questions, the invitation is the same: bring what you have. Watch what God does. You don’t need to manufacture miracles. You need to trust that when you bring your ordinary moments to Jesus, he makes them extraordinary.
Will you pray with me?
Gracious God, transform our water into wine. Fill our empty jars with your abundance. Use our ordinary obedience for your extraordinary glory. Amen.
AI tools assisted with drafting and research for this sermon, working within a theological framework I developed for preaching at McPherson First UMC. Scripture selection, theological direction, and final content remain my pastoral responsibility.
Rev. Andrew Conard 