I find it interesting that Tennessee’s expulsion (and the resulting uproar) of two African-American representatives is happening near Easter weekend. A couple of thousand years ago the Romans crucified a man that delivered an unpopular message in an unconventional way, and yesterday, Tennessee’s legislative body cast out two young African-American men that also delivered an unpopular message in an unconventional way.

Unpopular in the Tennessee legislature, I should say. Most Americans are ready for something to be done about children being slaughtered in their schools.

Jesus took on the power structure with a message of love, compassion and forgiveness. He even got a little rough casting out the money changers in the Temple. Jesus wasn’t messing around. But within a week of carrying out his act of civil disobedience, he was dead.

A week after three Tennessee legislators took the floor to protest the killing of children, they were expelled.

As the story goes, Jesus rose from the dead three days after his death. As a lesson, it teaches that you can kill the man, but the message lives on. And the same will be true about the two brave men that took stood for children and took on the gun lobby in the Tennessee legislature. They may have been expelled, but their message will live on and become even stronger. Truth and light eventually carry the day.

If the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church, what these men (and one woman who survived the expulsion vote) have endured could well be the beginning of the end for the gun lobby. One can hope.

“Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.”-Edward Abbey