Jesus uses every opportunity to teach his host and attendees at table to see things anew. There is always a point of encounter. To meet Him where we are at is to be prepared for a renewal in our ordinary routines and perhaps, customs. For Jesus, encounter is a way of life. His acceptance to have a meal at the table of a Pharisee becomes a lasting impression to see if our interior life and external gestures are reflective of each other. A Pharisee is esteemed to be a morally and religiously abiding figure. Yet Jesus approached, and reproached, his audience fairly. On another occasion, He made room for sinners like Zacchaeus, it was an encounter that spurred that wealthy and corrupt man to repent, and atone for his extortion, and exploitation. An encounter with Jesus is a threshold to transformation from within.

As Teresa of Avila would say, "We need no wings to search for God but only to look upon Him present within." There is an incomparable treasure within us that is not only capable of sustaining us, but of shaping us. Just as we are shaped by our encounters with others, we fail to be shaped by encounters we avoid. Here we find that Jesus intentionally accepted the invitation of a Pharisee, to imprint for all the moment in which our Pharisaical self should feel accepted, mattered, but challenged to see the deeper treasure within.