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Recently a major insurance company aired a series of television commercials which have been called "good deeds" ads, featured strangers doing good deeds for other strangers which inspired onlookers to do the same. The ads were clearly effective since it got people talking about the ad, which is what the insurance company was after. Most of the reactions posted on YouTube were positive:“If only people learned a lesson from this commercial. So often we get wrapped up in our own world and think that other people will do the right thing even if we don't.”“This makes me super-happy. I almost cried at a freaking insurance commercial. I'm such a dork.”“I like this commercial. Why can't everyone just do the right thing, even when no one is watching? But then again, you never really know who is watching, do we? Spread the love.”The story Jesus tells in the Gospel is clearly one of the world’s most loved stories. It’s a classic. It, too, was told to get people talking about it, not to sell a product or service, but to change the way people live, to teach a concrete lesson in the meaning of love. It did got people talking, but two thousand years later it still hasn’t fulfilled its promise.What makes the transformation demanded by the story so difficult is the radical nature of the meaning of the love it represents. It’s not the warm fuzzy notion of romantic love. It’s not even the love of a mother for her child. It’s not even the feeling that is at the heart of the scenarios of that insurance commercial. It is the unabashed compassion and generosity for someone foreign, someone even despised. To gain the full impact of the intention of the story, think of the last person on earth for whom you would be willing to make that sacrifice. That’s the love Jesus is talking abut in the parable.The priest and the Levite in this story have never been given the benefit of the doubt, though some point out that, as temple officials, they were concerned with being defiled by what may have even been a dead man. A weak defense, to say the least. But the Samaritan, who was despised by Jews, “was moved with compassion,” the same expression used by Luke to describe the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son!In spite of the popularity of the story and its meaning being preached for centuries, the intended impact is still elusive. Jesus is not looking for a “super- happy” response. He wants us to “go and do likewise.” “If only people learned a lesson from this” is also not his point. Jesus wants us to look into our own hearts as the first reading suggests. We know what to do. God’s law is in our hearts. Unfortunately like the priest and the Levite, what happens so often to you and me is that human self-interest trumps the law of love. Most often it isn’t malicious; it may not even be intentional. Sometimes, like racism, it’s something that has crept into our attitude or behavior. But once we recognize its presence in our lives, we, who bear the law of love in our hearts, must embrace the latter to cancel out the former. It’s hard work. And that’s probably what I personally didn’t like in those insurance commercials. It all seemed too easy. Real acts of compassion are rooted in genuine self-sacrifice. They tend to be challenging, even uncomfortable, simply because they deny self-interest and put the other person first.On another occasion Jesus illustrated that very challenge when he cautions that loving those who love you, doing good to those who do good to you, is what even pagans do. He wants you and me to love our enemies, to do good to those who persecute us. So this same Jesus is offering us another example of genuine self-sacrifice in the parable of the Good Samaritan. He knows, and witnesses with his own suffering and death, that creating a world of peace and justice will take the full impact of the law of love.As we gather to celebrate his testimony to that law, we once again are reminded of the ultimate challenge of discipleship. We take what we hear in the Word of God today and what we celebrate around this altar and allow it to wash over all our relationships, all our attitudes, all our behaviors so that they might be transformed into the image of the one who asks us again today – for the umpteenth time – “go and do likewise.”