GREETING AT THE
FUNERAL OF PR. ARTHUR RIMMEREID
July 1, 2019
On behalf of the Northwestern Minnesota Synod, where
Art served both as an assistant to our first bishop Harold Lohr, and later as our
synod’s second bishop….
and on behalf of the ELCA Conference of Bishops and
its chairperson Bishop Bill Gafkjen of the Indiana-Kentucky Synod…
and on behalf of Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton of
the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, I greet you—family and friends, as
we remember, give thanks for and commend to almighty God’s care our dear
brother, Pastor Art Rimmereid.
I will never forget the first time I met Art, in
November of 1991 when we were together at the annual regional retreat for ELCA
bishops and bishops’ assistants at Luther Crest Bible Camp near Alexandria, MN.
In that first time with Art, I will never forget two
things. First, how the two of us “hit
it off” almost immediately, both of us loving stories and humor and good fun….and
often thereafter Art and I sat together at such confabs…sometimes almost on the
verge of misbehaving, though—thank goodness!--we were never placed on
detention. Art loved laughter, funny stories, teasing and
joy—and just being with him was always a delight!
The second thing I’ll never forget from my first time
with Art is that he never, ever treated me like the the 36-year-old kid I
happened to be. Rather, even though Art
was more than two decades my senior, he always regarded me as a peer. Utterly
comfortable in his own skin, Art never thought too highly of himself, whether
he was with his fellow bishops or the people of God whom he loved to serve.
Lastly, in the words of an old English collect, let us
remember before God Art and all others “who rejoice with us, but upon another shore
and in a greater light, that multitude which no [one] can number, whose hope
was in the Word made flesh, and with whom, in this Lord Jesus, we for evermore
are one.”[1]
Bishop
Lawrence R. Wohlrabe
Northwestern
Minnesota Synod ELCA
[1]
From the Bidding Prayer in the liturgy for A Festival of Nine Lessons and
Carols at King’s College, Cambridge, U.K.
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