It reminds me of a story about a young, newly ordained minister who went to serve his first church. He noticed that on the first Sunday, when he said the prayers, the congregation on the left side of the church stood at the beginning of the prayers, and the congregation on the right side remained seated. Distressed by what he had seen and all that was taking place, the young pastor went to seek the council of the former, now elderly pastor, who had served this congregation for years. The way things are now, half stand and half sit and all end up screaming at one another during the prayers. As he does, he explains to the audience the value of tradition as he sees it.
Tradition is meant to speak of the reality behind the tradition.
If it fails to do that then the tradition becomes dead and the reason for what we do is lost or lapses simply into being the way it has always been done. And, it is a common mistake. One to which many of us can relate. Over time the Pharisees began to think that God's purpose for the framework of the Old Testament, the covenant God had made with God's people, the law handed down, was to make people behave correctly. Jesus was insisting that the greatest ritual service of all is the service of human need.