On Taylor Swift's hymnlike lockdown song ‘Epiphany’

by Jonathan Evens

‘Epiphany’ is a hymnlike lockdown song by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift which is from her album Folklore released in July 2020. It begins with Swift imagining the wartime experiences of her paternal grandfather who fought at the Battle of Guadalcanal in the Second World War. This was the first major land offensive by Allied forces against Japan and was fought between 7 August 1942 and 9 February 1943 on and around the island of Guadalcanal in the Pacific. Her grandfather never spoke about his experiences and the genesis of the song came from Swift’s attempts to imagine what that generation saw about which they could not speak. She imagines her grandfather tending to a wounded comrade bleeding out on one of the island’s beaches.

Thinking about those unable to speak about the horrors they have lived through, her thoughts turn to medical staff during the pandemic and the mental anguish endured through the harrowing experience of tending to the dying. She imagines a nurse or doctor on a 20 minute break between shifts yearning for an epiphany that will provide relief from the unrelenting agony experienced on each shift.

‘Epiphany’ honours those who serve others by telling untold stories of being with others. These are stories that those who serve cannot tell themselves so, through her imaginative empathy, Swift is also with those whose service she celebrates.

In 2015, Sam Wells published A Nazareth Manifesto which described the theology of being with, the argument that at the heart of the Christian faith is God's commitment to be with us.  Wells writes that:

‘Being with is the recognition that one must accompany others while they find their own methods, answers, approaches – and meanwhile celebrate and enjoy the rest of their identity that’s not wrapped up in what you (perhaps ignorantly) judge to be their problem. Therefore being with starts with people’s assets, not their deficits. It seeks never to do for them what they can perfectly well, perhaps with encouragement and support, do for themselves. But most importantly being with seeks to model the goal of all relationships: it sees problem-solving as a means to a perpetually-deferred end, and instead tries to live that end – enjoying people for their own sake.

Being with also involves paying attention to whether the person before us is called, troubled, hurt, afflicted, challenged, dying or lapsed, seeking, of no faith, of another faith, hostile; it is asking ‘what do you seek?’ and ‘what do you bring?’; and focuses on presence, attention, acknowledging mystery, openness to delight, enjoyment, and glory, and working in partnership.’

This understanding of incarnational mission and ministry was revealed to Wells in an epiphany about the nature of the incarnation. Jesus Christ spent a week in Jerusalem working for us (1%), three years in and around Galilee working with us (9%) but spent 30 years in Nazareth just being with us (90%). Wells came to see that a truly incarnate practice of mission seeks to reflect those percentages.

Ethiopian Magi, Patrick Comerford

The Feast of the Epiphany sees Jesus portrayed as the hope of the world by his ‘epiphany’ or ‘showing forth’ to the Magi from distant lands; an epiphany being a moment of revelation. Epiphany celebrates the showing of the new king, Jesus, to the world through the Magi who, traditionally, are representatives from different continents. Having appreciated the Christmas story of God sending Jesus to be born as a human being, a person like us, God with us, Epiphany is the time to become aware of the implications for all people everywhere of what God was doing in the incarnation. The real epiphany is the one granted to Wells, that of seeing that being with is not just about God with us but also about us with others and others with us.

In ‘Epiphany’ Swift shows us examples of being with others that are Christ-like in their nature. Whether soldier or medic, both sing ‘With you, I serve / With you, I fall down’. That is the essence of incarnate mission, of being with. The epiphany that soldier and medic seek is, on the one hand, ‘Just one single glimpse of relief’ and, on the other, ‘To make some sense of what you've seen’. To see that their being with is an echo of Christ’s being with and an anticipation of heaven, where there is nothing but being with, is an epiphany that truly makes sense of what they have seen.

The first lockdown generated slogans that included ‘Community like never before’ and ‘Let’s make this love normal’. Such sentiments have seemed in shorter supply since. Swift’s ‘Epiphany’ returns us to the place of those slogans and introduces us to the real meaning of epiphany; the incarnate practice of being with.

Rev. Jonathan Evens is Associate Vicar for HeartEdge at St Martin-in-the-Fields and co-author of ‘The Secret Chord,’ an impassioned study of the role of music in cultural life written through the prism of Christian belief. To know more about Jonathan’s work, visit his blog. Cover photo taken from TS Folklore Photoshoot