Do our neighbors wear hoodies?

Luke 10: 25-37 -- What do you think? Which of these three was a neighbor to the man who encountered thieves?"

In a world that is now being defined by hoodies and death comes with ice tea on teens breath, it might be instructive to take another look at Jesus' aged, wrinkled story about a man traveling down a road that was notorious from thievery.

A man was traveling on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. It goes almost straight downhill, through some terrifically dry terrain. The man was attacked, beaten, left for dead. As Jesus tells the story, two men come by, one a priest, the other a Levite whose role would have been to help the priest. They pass for reasons we wouldn't understand but would have been understood by the ones Jesus told the story to. Then a third man, a Samaritan came by. A dirty Samartan, the listeners would have heard. A half-breed, someone the Jews surrounding Jesus as he told the story, would have heard. But this one helped the beaten man.

Jesus question was this: Who is our neighbor, the ones who didn't help or the ones who did?

Now place yourself in the story. Just what if with me a second. What if the man who helped was dressed in a hoodie and was black? Or what if the man lying there was dressed in a hoodie and was black? Or what if we take all this drama out of our lives and simply ask the question once and for all, who is our neighbor?

I take no sides in the current squabble. I only say in these things, turn the tables. If the shooter was black and the man lying dead was white, where would intensity of the 25,000 heading to Florida be?

Who is our neighbor? Until we reach the stage when we are ALL neighbors, Jesus will not be pleased, I suspect.