Trinity Sunday, Year B

Scott Anderson

Readings for the Sunday:
Isaiah 6:1-8 | Psalm 22: 29 | Romans 8:12-17 | John 3:1-17

There are two kinds of people in the world, I think—those who understand they are beautiful, and those who are beautiful but have not yet figured it out. I’m talking about real beauty here—not the beauty so often defined by our western culture that is apparently accessible only between the ages of 25 and 30, not the surface kind of beauty that is driven by insecurity and the kind of advertising that pedals scarcity and uncertainty. I’m talking real beauty. Deep beauty that knows it’s beautiful.

I’m talking about the beauty that I think Jesus is talking about when he tells Nicodemus you must be born again, born from above. I’m talking about the kind of sublime beauty that Isaiah captures in his vision of a Holy God that scares and even shames him, and yet he can’t not follow. He can’t but find strength and courage within himself. I’m talking about a beauty I hope I am beginning to understand, although I may be mistaken. For certain, I have a long way to go.

I think I started taking pictures a few years ago as a way of trying to get to this kind of beauty—a training regimen of sorts. There’s something about an image, and, I suspect even more, about training the eye to capture an image that speaks to the kind of beauty I’m trying to talk about and I think Trinity Sunday is trying to name in a way.

There’s a photographer called Jimmy Nelson who understands something of this, I think. You may not know the name, but you have probably seen some of his

pictures. He’s traveled to some of the most remote parts of the earth to take shots of some of the last primitive tribes on the planet. He has literally traveled to the ends of the earth in search of beauty.

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