When it comes to holiness and purity of heart, the bottom line is love of God and love of neighbor. “The whole law and the prophets,” Jesus says, “depend on these two” (Matt 22:40). What goes for the law and prophets goes for secondary practices, “the tradition of the elders.” They are secondary because they are meant to serve “the commandment of God.” But they can be made to serve something else—self-righteousness, a sense of superiority over others, or evasion of the obligation of love, all under the cloak of religiousness.

Today’s Gospel features three instances of “many such things”: the Pharisees’ hyper-insistence on ritual purity, using it to question the integrity of Jesus and his teaching, and the misuse of qorban to evade providing financial care to one’s parents. We ourselves are not immune from turning secondary practices into idols. In such cases, our hearts have gone astray. Our ego’s needs, fears, and desires replace God’s agenda with a merely human one—“their hearts are far from me.”

Is Jesus condemning all religious practices and traditions? Not at all. The love of God and neighbor in one’s heart is only a daydream if not embodied in concrete practices and traditions. But to serve God’s agenda, they must express the commandment of love. When Jesus washed the feet of the disciples, his ritual action embodied God’s love, embracing human need and summoning followers to go and do likewise. We rightly treasure this tradition of our elder Jesus and keep it to this day.