COMMUNION SUNDAY
fiction BY
ZARY FEKETE
Today is Communion Sunday at the 1 st Baptist Church of Dassel, Minnesota. Because of recent medical restrictions the little pieces and bread and the plastic thimbles of grape juice are no longer dispensed from the front of the sanctuary by volunteers. Instead they are pre-packaged in small plastic units which can be picked up at the back of the sanctuary. The official name for this product is the “pre-filled communion cup with accompanying wafer”. The units have a shelf-life of one year. To keep the cost low the items have not been consecrated by an ordained pastor. They are not approved by the FDA, and they come in a package which states that “the items in this container are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or health condition.” This new method of distributing the communion elements was not part of the church’s yearly plan, but this is also not the first time the church needed to be flexible with the times.
Daniel Swanson built the 1 st Baptist Church of Dassel in 1909. Mr. Swanson immigrated to Minnesota from Sweden. He settled in Minnesota because his three brothers had already come there before him. Swedish people joined Finnish immigrants in the northern Midwest because the terrain was similar to their homeland in Scandinavia. Mr. Swanson built the church with the help of his brothers, but he was the designer. Swanson lost two fingers from his left hand when a
supporting ceiling beam fell on him during the installation of the roof.
The pastor of the 1 st Baptist Church is Ralph Lundeen. His ancestors are also from Sweden, but he was born in Minnesota. He never graduated from seminary. He was an electrician before he became a pastor. He began to study theology on his own after surviving an electrical work accident. Because Mr. Lundeen had done so much self-study the elders agreed to allow him to become ordained without a seminary degree. They counted his previous years of electrician employment as a surplus of public experience, a sort of internship in the public sphere.
Alyssa Nelson has been attending services at the church for the past 2 years. She is a single mother of four. Her husband left her after the birth of her youngest child, and she doesn’t know where he is living. Alyssa lost her job during the early months of the pandemic and since then she has been exclusively supported by the Grace Fund of the 1 st Baptist Church. The Grace Fund is a special financial collection which happens every Communion Sunday. Once the church began to support her, Alyssa volunteered to clean the church every Saturday afternoon. Last month she was the person who noticed that the church was running low on the pre-filled communion sets. A new order was placed so that there would be enough in for today.
The wafers come from a bread factory in San Miguel near Mexico City. Although Mexico has a long-tradition of local neighbourhood bakeries, most of the standard bread products distributed across the country are manufactured in large factories which use mechanical kneaders and mixers. The man who maintains the kneeding machine where the 1 st Baptist Church wafers are made is Antonio Rios. He was hired by the Mexican factory five years ago after he finished trade
school. After six days of work Antonio attends mass on Sundays at his local Catholic church. His priest performs the Lord’s Supper every Sunday, unlike the Minnesota tradition of once a month. The church in Mexico uses wine instead of grape juice, but it uses the same factory wafers at the church in Minnesota.
The priest in Antonio’s church is Roberto Velez. He felt God called him to join the church through the teachings of the sisters in the orphanage where he spent his first 18 years of life.
San Miguel, Mexico and Dassel, Minnesota are 2000 miles apart. What connects the two locations is a certain local perspective on life and the small wafers. During Communion the words that Father Velez says in Mexico are the same words that Pastor Lundeen says in Minnesota, “Take this and eat it for this is my body, this is my blood. It is poured out for the
many.”
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ZARY FEKETE has worked as a teacher in Hungary, Moldova, Romania, China, and Cambodia. He enjoys books, podcasts, and long, slow films and currently lives and works as a writer in Minnesota.