There was, for a time, a particular canon of the Cathedral who was famed for his haughty air – his devout manner, the minute perfection of his presentation and his prayer, the elegance and piety of his sermons, the immense size of his dog collar. He would always have an appropriately holy word of wisdom or quote from scripture, his pauses during the psalms were always longer and more profound than anyone elses. In short we all hated him.

Imagine the delight then of his esteemed colleagues in the ministry when one day he ascended the the steps of the Cathedral pulpit at one grand gathering or another. With his first step he trod on the hem of his surplice trapping the fabric against the stairs. His second step was higher up the inside of the garment and he had to stoop a little. Now however both feet were firmly on the cloth and unless he could levitate there was no way back. Sometimes you just have to swallow your pride and soldier on. His weight already moving forwards, he had no choice but to continue up the steps, with each one his head remained at exactly the same level and he had to bend further and further over. As he reached the top, rocking backwards and forwards unsteadily, only his eyes were visible over the top of the pulpit. As he hopped up and down tugging on the surplice to free it, these eyes were not those of a happy pulpit.

To us, the sounds of heavenly choirs could be clearly heard as cosmic balance reasserted itself and for a time, all was well with the world.

“For all who exalt themselves will be humbled” says Jesus today these words have been fulfilling in our hearing said we. But of course this attitude is uncharitable. Fun, but uncharitable. And unfair – as I got to know the man a little better, I came to think that his haughtiness as it so often does, sprangs from insecurity and a sense of inadequacy. And I can recognise the tendency to overcompensate myself – except I tend to do it by being as deliberately impious as possible – anti-pious – rather than going round asking people if they'd like a wee prayer– but its the same insecurity at work, its a very human response to a role that sets you apart in some ways and gives you a certain status in some quarters and a very ambiguous status in others. When we feel insecure or out of place, we tend to act out.

And though our society may not be as acutely status conscious as Jesus' was – or not as explicitly so, we are still innately attuned to the dynamics of hierarchy, of what puts you up or down in the eyes of those around us. In Jesus' day, doing the guest list for a banquet like this one was far worse than any wedding table plan you might have had to put together, when you've had to work out whether you put the bridesmaids mum and her dads new girlfriend on the same table or which one to offend by moving them onto a lower one.

In the Graeco-Roman world your place at the table – and whether you had a place or not, was a direct reflection on your place in society – and your means of keeping that place. We may understand today the value of networking and the dubiousness of old boys clubs and exclusive gatherings where some get ahead and others are excluded, we may understand what was at stake when Nick Griffin was invited and then uninvited to the Queen's garden party, but yet in our more flexible and safety-netted society these things are a matter only of relative wealth and success, rarely a matter of life or death. But in the 1^st century, being correctly alligned with someone who could help you get ahead – essentially being able to find a patron, could all that kept you and your family from starvation. Who you set next to at one table could determine whether there was any food to set on the next table you found yourself at. There were only a very few seats at the table of prosperity and comfort and an invitation to that life was highly prized.

To regulate this there arose a sophisticated system of honour and shame, an acute Darwinian sensitivity to who was on the way up and who was about to fall, to what secured your place amoung the accepted and the elite and what threatened you with ruin.

Many studies have been done on these concepts - honour and shame. We still hear about it in its extreme form of 'honour killings' for example. But in fact sociologists have shown that where ever the protection of law and order is weak or absent, honour cultures tend to develop – it is a way of keeping order, imposing structure, a way for a community to police itself – so it can be with more obvious examples like remote rural or tribal cultures or gang and criminal communities and so on. But honour systems exist in local communities, in schools, societies, churches – any human community.

The idea is that if everyone knows their place, and keeps to it – or is kept in it – then order is maintained – and safety is maintained too, because the essential idea is to trade in honour and shame as a currency instead of in violence. Because they are a veiled substitute for violence, honour cultures are inherently brutal systems, challenging them is often dangerous and often results in the violence being unleashed, as ultimately it does for Jesus.

At a more basic level, last week Laura and I were watching proboscis monkeys doing exactly the same thing – they have evolved like many creatures away from the use of direct violence in sorting our who is the alpha male – engaging in combat when you are both 60ft up a tree is not the best way to ensure the success of future generations of your offspring. It doesn't help you if you win the position of alpha male while plunging headfirst into the open mouth of a saltwater crocodile. So instead of fighting, the rival males compare the size of their noses – seriously – the bigger the hooter the bigger the man, and then dance about leaping from branch to branch trying to produce the best nasal snort. Eventually one of the females will settle the issue by a fairly blatant act of public copulation with the winner. Any suggestions that such scenes are repeated every Friday night outside the nightclubs of Chester would of course be unfair – however the behaviour of proboscis monkeys is no more ridiculous than the posturing and greasy pole climbing exploits of human beings.

Now you and I may feel uncomfortable with power games, we may blush furiously and protest our unworthiness if we are invited to the top table, now everyone fights for the back pew in the church not the front ones and at baptisms and weddings no one will sit at the front at all, they always say no I'll leave that to someone more important, so the family end up sitting on their own with three empty rows behind them, but we are still sensitive to the little cues of place and status. Freud had plenty to say about our tendency to instil shame in children as one of the first lessons we learn. We all feel, to one extent or another, sensitive to our standing, we fear losing face, feeling embarrassment, falling down the pecking order. We all know what it is like to be the one who is being talked about or smirked about behind a hand or behind your back. To be put back in your place, told that you have got above yourself, or that you have transgressed some obscure code of behaviour and are now to be disapproved of.

And of course we are sensitive to these things, because knowing where we fit in, and knowing that we fit in, are basic human needs. We were made for relationship with each other, and we need to know and feel secure in the particular forms that relationship is going to take. It may be about our egos, but our egos need to be quieted, to be reassured if we are to be healthily, happily functional people.

It is the letter to the Hebrews which has an answer, which makes explicit what Jesus goes on to say about invitations and rewards – it says “be content with what you have; for he has said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” So we can say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?”

Note, not be content because you have everything, not be content because nothing will go badly, just be content because God. If you are a child of God, you know the seat at the table that has been spread before you, you know what your status, your standing is, and most importantly you know where you fit in, and where you don't.

Or in other words sometimes we may step on our cassocks or fall flat on our faces, or like one poor nurse I heard of recently, we may walk the entire length of the Maelor Hospital with your skirt tucked into your knickers – but if you are secure in who you are – and secure in whose you are – if you have the reassurance of heaven, do you really need the passing plaudits, the brief acclaim of those who ten minutes later will resume the whispering behind their hands again?

We'd probably all like an invite to the right party, a seat at the top tables, but we have already received an invitation greater than any of these.

Happy are those who are called to his supper.