Psalm 128: How blessed is everyone who fears the LORD, who walks in His ways. When you shall eat of the fruit of your hands, you will be happy and it will be well with you. Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine within your house, your children like olive plants around your table. Behold, for thus shall the man be blessed who fears the LORD.

Some Christians view the Lord’s Table as a place where families gather to commune with God. I don’t think that’s correct. This is not a place where families gather. It’s the place where a family gathers, the family of God, the brotherhood of saints, the household of the Lord.

Already in the Old Testament, the feasts of Israel were feasts of Israel, of the whole people of God, the family of Abraham, the children of Yahweh. At the first Passover, the people ate in their homes, but even then the meal was not a family meal. If a family was too small to eat a whole lamb, they called their neighbors, not the next of kin, to share in the meal with them. When Israel celebrated the Passover after that, they gathered to the tabernacle or temple, the single house at the center of Israel, to the single table, the altar.

This is why we don’t distribute the bread and wine by household. To do that would suggest that this table is actually a collection of individual family tables. But it’s not. It’s a single table for the one family of God.

How do families fit into the church, then? The basic answer is that the liturgy marks a weekly death for the family. Through much of church history and still in some churches today, men and women worshiped on different sides of the church. A man and woman might be married outside, but inside the church they are brother and sister.

Many of you came here as families, but during this hour the borders of your family dissolve and you come before the Lord as a single family. That liturgical dissolution of the family is not permanent. It is a moment of renewal. Like all deaths, the ritual death of your individual family in the liturgy is a step toward resurrection. After you have gathered here as the single household of faith, gathered at this one table, you disperse to your separate homes and tables, renewed by assembly in God’s house, by God’s Word, by God’s food.

Psalm 128 lays out a beautiful vision of family life and the family table. The man who fears the Lord will eat the fruit of his hands; his wife will be like a vine, and his children like olive shoots. But the Psalm is not first of all about our individual families. They are first of all about Christ and His family. He is the “man who fears Yahweh,” whose table is a place of joy, whose bride is fruitful, whose children are fat with the oil of anointing. Our families are reborn by inclusion in His family; we can rejoice at our family tables when they are extensions of His one table of joy.