Feasting on Hope: How God Sets a Table in the Wilderness (Hannah Miller King) - A Review

FEASTING ON HOPE: How God Sets a Table in the Wilderness. By Hannah Miller King. Foreword by Esau McCaulley. Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2026. 165 pages.

The Lord's Supper, also known as the Eucharist and Holy Communion, plays a central role in Christian theology and liturgical practice. For most Protestants, it is one of two sacraments (some call them ordinances), the other being baptism. I am an ordained minister in a denomination that practices weekly communion (Disciples of Christ), and I grew up in the Episcopal Church, which also places a strong emphasis on the Eucharist. The difference is that Episcopalians/Anglicans require a priest to consecrate the elements, which means that if there is no priest available, churches will offer what is known as Mo
rning Prayer (a liturgical service without the Eucharist). As for the Disciples, since lay elders have always been authorized to preside at the Table, there should always be someone available to preside. Although I’ve spent time among other communities that did not place communion at the center of their faith experience (Pentecostals and Baptists), the Eucharist has played a central role in my own spirituality. I even wrote a couple of books about the Eucharist, the most recent being Eating with Jesus: Reflections on Divine Encounters at the Open Eucharistic Table. Therefore, I have a deep interest in reading about how other Christians understand the Lord's Supper. With that in mind, I requested a review copy of  Hannah Miller King's book Feasting on Hope: How God Sets a Table in the Wilderness."

The title of King’s book, Feasting on Hope, intrigued me.  I wanted to know more about what Hannah Miller King had to say about this table of hope that God has set in the wilderness. What I found was a very personal reflection about the role the Table, in a variety of forms, has played in the author's own life. The author, Hannah Miller King, is a priest serving the Vine Anglican Church of North Carolina, a congregation that is part of the Anglican Church in North America. While the ACNA has historic links to the Episcopal Church, it is a more evangelical offshoot. So, while this has an evangelical tint to it, there is still a strong historic Anglican/Episcopal sensibility to it.

King offers a prologue to the book titled "A Tale of Two Tables." The two tables are her family table and the one at her church, around which she and other believers gather. In the latter case, she participates as both the recipient of the elements and as the one who presides at the Table. Throughout Feasting on Hope, King weaves together these two realities to create a sense of divine presence in both settings, as well as speaking to healing experienced at the Table amid trauma. The trauma that flows through the book is rooted in the death of her father while a young teen and the displacement that her family experienced in the aftermath, even as she found a sense of stability within the churches she and her family participated in, first Baptist and then Anglican. It was when she encountered the Anglican tradition that she was introduced to weekly communion, which she envisions as a family table, similar to but different from the table that her family gathered at during her childhood before her father's death.

After setting the table, so to speak, in the prologue, King begins to walk us through her vision of the Table that offers healing, even if that healing is not complete in the moment. Her first chapter points us to the theme offered by the book's title, which is hope. This chapter, titled “Hope,” carries the subtitle "The Feast and the Foretaste." In this chapter, King focuses on the eschatological dimension of the Table, a dimension presaged by the title of the book. Therefore, it is appropriate to start with the idea that the Table serves as a sign of hope. For her, the Table is the starting place for the conversation about hope, which is the trauma produced by her father's battle with cancer, a battle that involved the family’s hope of healing that did not come. However, the Table, around which her family had gathered at home as well as at church, offered a word of hope as it points to the manifestation of God's realm.

This word about Hope leads to a word about "Encounter: What Is Salvation Anyway?" (Chapter 2). In this chapter, King discusses her pregnancy, the birth of her first child, and the connections she found between her pregnancy and the Table. Both speak of relationship, of encounter, whether between mother and child, or the people of God and God, the latter of which can take place at the Table. Here she lifts up the images of reconciliation as an expression of what happens at the Table, together with images of what it means to participate in the life of Christ. Thus, she writes: "In fellowship with Jesus, we taste salvation." (p. 32).

From "Encounter," we move to "Embodiment: Broken Bread for Broken Bodies" (Chapter 3). King notes that she grew up without a robust theology of the physical world. However, early Christian theologians such as Irenaeus emphasized the material nature of the Eucharist as a response to docetic understandings of Jesus' incarnation. So, in this chapter, she focuses on the way the Eucharist emphasizes the goodness of the physical creation, especially as Jesus embodied it and restored it. As she does throughout, she brings in her own experiences. In this case, regarding her sense of her body and the death of her father. She writes that "In the meal God has prepared for us, we feast on a future that is breaking into the present, bringing healing and renewal to the most hidden parts of us. Because Christ's body was broken for us, our bodies can be made whole" (p. 46).

In Chapter Four, titled "Gift: The Prophetic Practice of Joy," she notes that while the Eucharist was from the beginning a serious rite, there has always been a sense of joy attached. She points out that in her Anglican tradition, the priest is called the celebrant. While the idea of “to celebrate” did not take on a joyful sense until the sixteenth century, she likes the double meaning it holds today, such that the Eucharist is both serious/reverent and celebratory. Thus, this joy that accompanies the rite is a gift from God.

Chapters 5 and 6 speak of the Lord's Supper in terms of community. King offers the subtitle to  Chapter 5: "The Table that Makes a Family." While she notes that biological family ties are important and that they should not be abandoned, she also points out that "we need the larger family of faith to help us understand the mystery of our inheritance, our identity as those born 'not of blood nor the will of the flesh. . . but of God'" (p. 65). For those who have experienced broken biological families, this larger expression of family, symbolized by the gathering at the table, can be healing. Chapter 6 addresses the fact that sometimes the church can be a problem. Therefore, she offers the subtitle to this chapter on “Community” of "When God's Family Contributes to Our Pain." Those of us who have been part of the church know that for many, Jesus might be appealing, but God's people might not be, especially when the church family betrays and abuses them. The Table itself has been a sign of brokenness, especially when it comes to denominational divisions and barriers that prevent people from fully gathering at the Table. I appreciate the fact that King acknowledges the church's failures that can't be papered over.

We live in a world that assumes that scarcity is the dominant principle of life. However, the Table can serve as a symbol of abundance, which is the theme of Chapter 7: "Abundance: Will There Be Enough for Me?" Here, King draws on her own experience of moving from a sense of abundance in early childhood to one of concern for whether there would be enough to eat after her father's death from cancer. Her experience of poverty haunted her even into adulthood. Thus, she points our attention to the stories of God's provision during the Exodus and Jesus' feeding of the 5000, a message embodied in the Eucharist. Chapter 8 speaks of "Hospitality: The Fullness that Feeds Others." If the previous chapter addresses the scarcity/abundance dynamic, here the focus is on God's provision through the church’s offering hospitality to others, symbolized by the Table.

As noted above, Hannah Miller King’s family experiences are woven into her conversation about the Table. We've already noted the loss of her father, but there is another loss that she brings into the conversation. That loss involves the death of her brother Noah, who took his own life at the age of 21. Thus, in Chapter 9, she speaks of "Courage: When Self-Giving Includes Loss." The Table reminds us that the one who is celebrated at the Table died, such that God suffered a loss. So, when we gather at the table, we do so as part of the larger human community that has denied Christ in so many ways, and yet we receive grace.

Finally, we come to the end: "Home: The Longest Table in the World" (Chapter 10). After the death of her brother, she and her husband chose to move closer to her family so that they might find that sense of being at home. She points out that "searching for home is one of the major storylines of the Bible." Thus, the Table stands as a sign of finding home. That is because "our true resting place can't be found by chasing the horizon or by cherishing the past; it can only be found in the One who holds these things together" (p. 134). So, hope is symbolized by the Eucharist, which a friend of hers suggested is "the longest table in the world." Here is the sense that when we gather at the Table, we do so along with the full communion of the Saints.

Many Christians struggle to make sense of the Eucharist. It may be due to a lack of experience with the Table. It may be due to being excluded from the Table. In Feasting on Hope, Hannah Miller King offers us a very helpful entry point to the Lord's Supper/Eucharist that is deeply personal, accessible, and inviting. While there is an evangelical sense to the book, it is also an inclusive one. So, I affirm her call to gather at the Table that God has set for us, even in the wilderness, that serves as a sign of hope. In an age of disarray, that is a welcome message.

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