Get Me A Musician
We hear a lot about the prophet Elijah in the church, very little about his successor, Elisha. I find that curious because Elisha’s impact on the narrative of God was enormous. When the prophetic mantle is first being passed, Elisha asks for a double measure of Elijah’s spirit and it seems to have been granted, empowering the new prophet with twice the spiritual potency of his predecessor (you know, the guy who got God to rain down fire on cue), resulting in a prodigious ministry that intersected with people at every level of society: artists and paupers, farmers and kings.
One of my favorite stories about Elisha recalls the time when three powerful leaders ask him for a word of wisdom from the Lord. And what does Elisha say in response? “Get me a musician.” (2 Kings 3:15) Elisha already has the power of the Living God in his very being. So, what does he need a musician for? What role do the music and the melody play in the coming miracle? Do the prophet’s prayers and the ascending tune have a greater impact than the prayers alone? Do songs meld with spirit in some mysterious way, like the Word animating water at baptism? Or is the musician simply there to embed the memory of God’s life-saving actions that day? Good songs are sticky, gratitude not so much.
“Our world is famished for these contemplative settings. ”
“Art is fundamental to the human search for deeper understanding.
Art, by extension of this reasoning, is fundamental to the understanding of the Bible.”
Makoto Fujimura, Art & Faith: A Theology of Making
When I first came to faith at the age of 33, I had a vision of a new kind of worship gathering. A vespers called The Renaissance Service: The Arts as a Window to the DivineTM. It was a candlelit feast for eyes, ears, and soul. I was not a visual artist or a poet or a musician, but I knew intuitively—or through revelation—that these were the tools that would create the “thin place” where a person disinclined towards the church could feel God’s presence and lean in.
The Passion by Patty Wickman, the opening image of the first Renaissance Service, 2000. It was intended to communicate the invitation to “come unto Him all who are weary and heavy laden”
Our world is famished for these contemplative settings. Why else would so many people—including those who’d never set foot in a church at home— flock to the great cathedrals when they’re traveling? What is it that makes an agnostic bow their head and light a candle or slide quietly into a pew to listen to the choir? I can’t say for sure, but I know it happens every single day all over the world. I was so drawn to the power of this paradox that I wanted to capture it in a music video. Singer-songwriter Shane Welter, director Daniel Warren, and the good people of St. James Cathedral in Seattle, WA made it possible.
On April 15th, 2019, a fire broke out in the iconic Notre Dame de Paris and the whole world grieved. Not just Catholics or Christians or the French. Fourteen million people visit that cathedral each year. Only a fraction of them go there to pray in a way that Elisha would have recognized but still they line up for hours for the chance to shuffle in awe through that sacred space. Why? Do all the prayers of the saints still linger in the air? What role does the art play in communicating the reality of something bigger? What meaning could a stained-glass tableau of the Scriptures impart to one who’s never read them? Maybe a better question is how any human being could stand before the Pieta and not feel Mary’s pain? Or consider—if only for a moment--what eternal love might look like in human form?
“I was not a visual artist or a
poet or a musician, but I knew intuitively—or through revelation—that these were the
tools that would create the “thin place” where a person disinclined towards the church
could feel God’s presence and lean in.”
On December 7, 2024, Notre Dame reopened to the public. One month later—January 7, 2025—an inferno engulfed the coastline of Los Angeles holding global TV viewers hostage with an ever-widening stream of apocalyptic images. In the midst of it all, I was scheduled to launch a new monthly arts salon called Chandelier at First Lutheran Church of Venice, where I am now the Minister of Community Engagement. Together with church leadership and the debut artist, we pondered whether to postpone. Eleven days after the fire’s onset, the whole city was still reeling, the flames not yet contained. We could see them on the horizon not five miles from the church. Many of us still had go-bags by the door.
It was a passage from a Jack Gilbert poem that ultimately convinced me to move forward as planned:
There is laughter every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness
to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.
To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
—A Brief for the Defense
Chandelier’s featured artist, Robert Schwan, began the evening by reflecting on a photo collage he’d done just a few months before. It was called Homeless Jesus in the Promised Land. He shared that an art collector friend was so taken by this piece that he bought it on the spot to add to his home collection. I looked around the room as Robert spoke. The cozy new space we’d created was filled to overflowing with people who were grateful just to be together, to focus on something other than destruction, to rest their eyes on his transcendent work.
Robert attends church— but not for the doctrine. He believes in the essential need for people in community to gather, to mark the joys and sorrows of our lives together. He’s deeply moved and convicted by the words of Jesus, but he’s filled with rage over the wretched and unholy alliance between White Christian Nationalism and our current political circumstance. This comes through loud and clear in Homeless Jesus, a prophetic word to those who have forsaken the least of these in His name.
Robert spoke in detail about the intricacies of the piece and then, just before he moved onto the next slide, added this coda. “Unfortunately, I had to rename it this week. It’s now called Lost in the Fires.” A man gasped. A woman cupped her hands to her face. The air was thick with sighing. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” took on new meaning as together we mourned the loss of a created image as if the subject had been real.
The mantle is being passed. It’s time. If the Church begins to hear the spirit of Elisha whispering, “get me a musician,” we should listen.
Homeless Jesus in the Promised Land by Robert Schwan, lost in the LA Fires, 2025
Heather Choate Davis is an L.A.-based author, speaker, theologian, liturgist, spiritual director, and songwriter. She has her MA in Theology from Concordia University, Irvine and has been a member of The Songwriter Initiative since its inception. In 2024, she became the Minister of Community Engagement at First Lutheran Church of Venice, CA. Find out more about Heather’s life and work at heatherchoatedavis.com