God vs Tradition

Matthew 15:1-9

¹ Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, ² “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”
 ³ Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? ⁴ For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’ ⁵ But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, ‘Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God,’ ⁶ he is not to ‘honor his father’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. ⁷ You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:
   ⁸ “‘These people honor me with their lips,
   but their hearts are far from me.
⁹ They worship me in vain;
   their teachings are but rules taught by men.’

Jesus sure one-ups the Pharisees and teachers of the law here, doesn't he?  "Why don't you listen to our teacher's doctrines?" they ask.

"Why don't you listen to God's?" Jesus replies. 

It's quite easy to become so enveloped by a system of doctrines or traditions that what God really desires - justice, mercy, and faithfulness - get thrown by the wayside.  After all, it's much easier, isn't it? 

For instance:  It's much easier to wear the robe you've always worn and stand up on a platform and recite the same words, week-in and week-out...than it is to face the uncertainty and ugliness that might ensue from "When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation" (1 Cor. 14:26).  It's much easier to sit in a chair or pew and passively listen to someone/some people perform up on stage, than it is to genuinely listen to, care about, grieve with, rejoice with, pray with, or love the person sitting right next to you in the same row.  It's much easier to think, "This is the way I've always experienced things, so it must be what God wants.  Maybe we just need to tweak the system a bit and make it relevant," rather than critically evaluate even your own sacred cow in light of scripture.

If you haven't caught on already, what I'm getting at in the above paragraph is this:  Could the institutional church (be it Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist, Wesleyan, Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, etc.) be one of those sacred cows?  Could it be one of the traditions that is so nice and easy to cling to, and that many will vehemently defend...even if it leads to dishonoring God?  Have we devoted the "help" that could be used for our brothers and sisters in need, to the building of $20 million palaces that lay dormant most of the week?

I hope we take Jesus seriously when he says that it's bad to nullify the word of God for the sake of our traditions.  I hope we can distance ourselves enough from our traditions so that we can evaluate them in light of what God desires for his kids.  He loved us enough to die for us, maybe we could at least do that for him?

What do you think?