A Love Supreme

Acknowledgement

“Love is patient, love is kind.” People love to skip straight to verse four of First Corinthians thirteen and begin the poetic recitation of one of the Bible’s most famous passages. Quoted at weddings and funerals alike, this text reveals the brilliance of Scripture to both believers and nonbelievers. It is avant garde spirituality, comparable to Jesus’ command to love your enemies. It flips spiritual ethics upside down and establishes an entirely new moral imagination.

Yet most people miss the hidden beauty of this passage by interpreting it sentimentally and intuitively, without proper context. They read, “Love is patient, love is kind,” pause, and say, “What a beautiful definition of love.” However, this passage is not primarily about romantic or abstract love. It is a rebuke.

Paul is addressing a Christian community whose behavior contradicted the very gospel they claimed to believe. He reminds them of the true meaning of love because they had forgotten it.

This is made explicit in the opening verse of the chapter. “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.” The Corinthian church was stained by favoritism toward privileged groups, division based on spiritual gifting, exploitation, and relational harm. Members were hurting one another, cheating one another, and reinforcing hierarchy instead of embodying unity. This was not simply dysfunction. It was injustice.

That reality is not difficult to recognize today. If we are attuned to our surroundings, we will quickly notice inequities within our own communities. I experienced this firsthand while attending seminary in Bannockburn, an affluent suburb in the northern Chicago area. Residents often spoke proudly about how safe, caring, and close knit their community was. Yet, after living there for several years and moving off campus, I encountered a hidden reality. A large population of immigrant workers sustained the estates as the underbelly of the community, their labor quietly maintaining the comfort of others as housekeepers, landscapers, and nannies.

They preserved the beauty of the neighborhood while remaining invisible within it. They were rarely present in fellowship, social gatherings, or worship spaces. They were carefully hidden within a manufactured landscape of comfort. They were unseen neighbors of the pristine and decedent wealthy suburban community.

Rolling Stone magazine ranked Marvin Gaye’s album What’s Going On as number one on its list of the five hundred greatest albums of all time. Released in 1971, the album offered a moral and spiritual awakening through the voice of one of America’s greatest soul singers. Under the pressure of tight deadlines from Motown, Gaye produced a project that fused musical excellence with social consciousness. The album endures not merely because of its beauty, but because love was used as an instrument of transformation.

That is the heart of this reflection. Love must do something. Our love should create lasting change, inspire others to love more deeply, and transform us from old patterns into agents of justice and renewal.

Resolution

A Love Supreme is widely regarded as one of the greatest jazz albums ever recorded. Led by John Coltrane, the quartet recorded the album in a single session in December of 1974. It was improvised, emotionally raw, and spiritually charged.

This album marked a comeback. Coltrane had been dismissed from Miles Davis’ touring group, struggling with addiction and personal collapse. He had reached rock bottom. What followed was a spiritual awakening, and A Love Supreme became his offering, his repentance, and his testimony to the Divine.

Coltrane is not merely acknowledging the triumphal power of love. He is communicating its capacity to transform. The album opens with a spiraling motif that both unsettles the listener and commands attention at the Impulse! Records studio. By the second movement, titled “Resolution,” the saxophone’s melodic structure progresses dynamically and resists repetition. Coltrane has something to say, and he says it without words, persisting with unwavering determination to make his point.

Jazz music is Black music. Born out of rejection from classical circles and a reimagining of how traditional instruments could be performed, jazz can challenge some listeners. It is a free art form, and Coltrane played it at its most experimental and expressive, unbound by written scores or rigid structures. In jazz, the drummer often sets the beat, while the bass and other instruments build upon each other through improvisation in the moment. The goal is to create harmony through spontaneous intuition. The best jazz musicians possess incredible musical instinct, maintaining beautiful tones while executing complex musical gymnastics and flawlessly landing intricate riffs.

It takes an advocacy for free form in order to fully appreciate jazz and what it represents in contrast to traditional music. Jazz was born as a response to the social dynamics of its time. The art form is avant-garde, a modern, direct reaction to the social injustices of the 1960s post-war era, expressing as anti-war, anti-racist, and anti-classist. Coltrane fused musical theory with social theology, calling for the transformation of society under the power and love of God.

Love, like jazz, requires freedom. It demands courage. It risks everything for harmony.

Pursuance

We must reembrace this ethic of love in our daily lives, whether or not we enjoy jazz or soul music. Our love must be reborn. Our calling is to build communities grounded in radical love that confront harmful patterns and resist injustice. Love is not passive or nostalgic. It is mature, disruptive, and constructive.

Love is progressive, innovative, and experimental in practice. It must continually be reimagined to address new challenges and complex realities.

For me, love has never been optional. I was raised in a deeply loving Christian home by parents who were Pentecostal pastors. My holiness mother, in particular, loves fiercely and without reserve. I never doubted the love of my family, and that privilege shaped me profoundly.

As I grew older, however, that foundation placed me in a liminal space of longing. As I embarked to date, graduate, and built my own life, I encountered repeated fractures in intimacy and community. By my early twenties, postmodernity had fully shaped my generation. Living in Chicago, I watched my peers deconstruct marriage, prioritize self care above all else, and replace family building with career mobility, travel, and curated activism.

These choices were not inherently wrong. Yet they delayed the formation of sustainable community. While my generation and Gen Z marched in the streets and advocated online, we often neglected the slow and sacrificial work of building local and enduring bonds. The loneliness epidemic that followed was not accidental.

I marched from Trayvon Martin to Ferguson to Black Lives Matter. I had networks, platforms, and purpose. Nevertheless, I entered my thirties without the family or communal rootedness I longed for.

Coltrane’s album went gold, selling over 500,000 copies. It was his best-selling album and a phenomenal commercial achievement for the jazz genre and community. Yet the greatest legacy of Coltrane’s work was not just the music on wax, but the creation of a truly progressive community rooted in love.

Coltrane's legacy reminds us that transformation is communal. Beyond the album itself, A Love Supreme inspired the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church in San Francisco. This worshiping community continues to gather around music, justice, and spiritual freedom. It remains a rare space where worship transcends class, race, and privilege.

Psalm

At thirty six years old, I have been a professional adult for over eighteen years. I accomplished much early, yet one longing remained unmet. I desired marriage and family. My mother pressed me lovingly in my late twenties to settle down and make her grandkids. Eventually, she embraced my delay and singleness becoming my greatest encourager during extended seasons of loneliness.

Coltrane ends A Love Supreme not with an applause, but with release. Musicians often know when they have created something transcendent. After years of struggle with depression, addiction, and failure, Coltrane reached his opus in this finale fouth part. His suffering gave birth to Romans 8:32 praise, "all things work together for those who love."

The drummer, McCoy Tyner, said in an interview that he knew during the recording that, as the harmonies built toward the end, they were creating something truly special. This kairos moment at the finale musically opened a new standard for jazz and broke new ground as Coltrane progressed through the twelve chord progressions.

Some truths can only be learned through trial. Great suffering often produces great clarity. This was a blessing born from the pain that marked his darkest moments. Some say that great moments can only arise from great suffering. We should even rejoice in trials and failures, for they are often the very experiences that give us perspective and a deeper appreciation for true victory.

On Saturday, December twenty eighth, just before the new year, I experienced that grace. After a long season of singleness, I married my love supreme, Nkhensani Ngobeni, on Camps Bay Beach in Cape Town, South Africa. A native Capetonian, she is brilliant, determined, and full of life. She is beyond a blessing and a partner better than what I could dream of. She said yes, as we said our vows in ceremony surrounded by her spiritual father, her mother Pearl Josias, and the beauty of sea and mountain.

Special thanks to Pastor Nigel Titus!

It was an avant-garde moment that only God could orchestrate. After the vows and prayer, we kissed, and a crowd gathered to bear witness on the beach. They did something remarkable, a spontaneous improvisation. Without prompting, they began harmonizing in traditional African song, unapologetically celebrating the moment. Little did they know the great challenges we had overcome to reach this point. Their singing left an emphatic mark, signaling the beginning of a new family and a life rooted in love.

When I went to ask Nkhensani’s mother for her hand in marriage, I was able to learn more about her remarkable legacy and the sacrifices she made in the struggle for liberation from apartheid. She approved as I asked about her being arrested more than seven times while protesting for the end of apartheid. Pearl told me about the horrors of people being beaten bloody with billy clubs and other weapons. I thought about how, if she had not survived those experiences, I would never have been able to have her daughter as my wife.

For me, this moment was a spiritual awakening. I experienced a transformation that enabled me to love more deeply and to believe and love again even as I played my part. Our four piece quartet—mother, bride, groom, and AME pastor—represented far more than the love of two individuals. It stood as an advocate for a love that produces care, justice, and restoration in a broken and dark world. We did not marry for a honeymoon; we married for harmony and empowerment. We married on mission, willing to sacrifice all we have for a better future.

Neither Nkhensani nor I are perfect. We have both endured failures and tribulations to reach this moment. Now, we have become one, committed to fight in unity. Our union is anti classist, anti racist, and anti establishment. I challenge you to find ways to come together in love, creating sustainable and lasting change and justice for yourself and your community.

I am a theologian on mission.

I am a the founder of Urban Reformers.

I am a husband.

I am a justice fighter.

I am a community builder.

Please join me in the pursuit of a love supreme.

For prayers or partnership, contact Jon@urbanreformers.com