Lenten Devotion for March 13 - silly rituals

Mark 7: 1-8
Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”


They had such crazy rituals
which distracted them from human need.
They washed their hands in a special way
before the hungriest they could feed.

There have always been traditions
collected during the years
with little affect on the spirit
but rather on how it appears.

“We’ve always done it this way,”
speaks out our modern day scribes.
They want us to do the same things
which seem to give them good vibes.

Jesus knew people were important
much more than what humans decide.
When the human will get in the way
the vain and the holy collide.