What if someone came along and told you the chief occupation of Christians is busting people out of jail? What would you say? Would you agree or disagree? But it’s true: our primary occupation should be busting each other out of jail. Jesus says as much in his mission statement for ministry when he addresses the religious leaders in his hometown synagogue: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has sent me . . . to preach deliverance to the captives . . . to set at liberty those who are oppressed" (Luke 4:18).

I guess it’s how you define "jail." When I was in seminary and serving as a student pastor at an African-American Baptist church, I often heard a saying from the parishioners particular to American Black culture: they would tell each other how they were "clothed and in their right mind." I knew where they got that reference—from Luke, chapter 8, where a possessed man, jailed in torment by demons is freed from his imprisonment by Jesus. My black brothers and sisters knew it well: imprisoned and possessed by the demons of racial prejudice, economic injustice, family break-ups and break-downs, battles against drugs and alcohol, culturally induced shame, they knew it all but they testified anyway how Jesus—through the church—had freed them from imprisonment to such demonic forces and had helped them to rise above such circumstances. They could testify—and did—how Jesus had given them the strength, dignity, hope, courage and real assistance to bust on out of such jails. Meanwhile, many others of my middle-class white experience continue to languish in the prison of comfort, convenience and apathy.

Paul says Jesus can bust us out of the jail of religious confinement, Luke says Jesus can bust us out of the jail of demonic possession, African-Americans can testify how Jesus can bust us out of life circumstances. Our job is to be jail busters, first seeking freedom for ourselves then making the way clear for others.

Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed.

Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith.

But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian,

for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.

As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee.

As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs.

When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me’—

for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.)

Jesus then asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He said, ‘Legion’; for many demons had entered him.

They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.

Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission.

Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.

When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country.

Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid.

Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed.

Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned.

The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying,

Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.’ So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.