Marielle Franco and the crucifixion of love

“Jesus died of being human,” Herbert McCabe preached in a Good Friday sermon. As the Dominican theologian writes elsewhere, “In the world we have made it is fatal to be human, to be really human, to be open and vulnerable to others, to be loving.” The prologue to John’s Gospel announces Jesus’ rejection by his own people, a rejection that will unfold in the subsequent pages. McCabe explains that this Jesus, God’s-love-made-flesh, is one “our world perceives as a threat and reacts accordingly.”

Jesus died of human love, a love so true, so vulnerable, so fierce, that he shook the foundations of our world built upon sin. So they killed him. So we killed him—the Gospel of John implicates everyone in the death of Jesus, the whole world contorted by the desire to get rid of him, because his love threatened the stability of our world and of our lives. Sin is the name of that force at work in the world, insinuating its way into us, that rejects love and crucifies the love-made-flesh.

The world that killed Jesus is the same one that killed Marielle Franco earlier this month in Brazil. After speaking at a public forum in her community, Franco was assassinated on her way home, a political execution in the streets. She was a member of the Rio de Janeiro city council—the only black woman among 51 members. She belonged to the party for socialism and liberation. She was married to a woman, raising a daughter. The talk she had just given, before her death, was about “Young Black Women Who Are Changing Power Structures”—that was the title of the forum.