It is safe to say I think that the Staff and congregation of St Paul's Cathedral have been on something of a learning curve these past few weeks.

One of the favourite images of the press and TV coverage has been the large signs held up by the Occupy protesters asking “What would Jesus do?”

Commentators from across the political and religious spectrum have offered their answers to this question, and while of course no definitive answer can be given, at least we should welcome the fact that the teachings and attitudes of Jesus have been placed at the centre of a national and international debate.

I wonder what sort of reception then Jesus might have got, had he preached the parable of the talents to that audience? Doesn't the parable praise the roots of capitalism and condemn those who lack financial ambition? Speculate to accumulate seems to be its message. And the kicker is the line whoever has will be given more but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. Isn't this exactly what Occupy are protesting about?

Now you might object that this isn't a parable about money – and to an extent that's true, ultimately as we will see it is about more than money – and yet the world of capital is where it draws its power from. Certainly we need to disabuse ourselves of the notion that it is about talents in the sense of the ability to play the piano or dance. A talent is a measure of money – and money in vast amounts. In other words we might suggest that this is the sort of Britain got Talents that Simon Cowell is really interested in.

A gold talent is about £500,000 in todays money – so the man given 5 talents was being given more money than he could have earned in at least 100 years work at the time. And this injustice is key. However badly this parable would go down at St Paul's or on Wall Street it would have gone down at least as badly in Galilee.

Jesus is describing a situation – albeit exaggerated a little , that his audience would have understood all too well. Galilee was a land of tenant farmers working for largely absent landlords. Stories of exploitation and greed were common, and in the virtual absence of a middle class, the contrast between the landed, wealthy elite 1% and the remaining 99% was deeply apparent and felt.

They knew what it meant to work for one who reaped what he did not sew and gathered what he did not plant. They knew too what a precarious life it was – how quickly they could be cast off the land they had tilled and be cast into the outer darkness.

But the worst part to the ears of Jesus' first listeners would be the suggestion that the landlord makes at the end. “Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest.”

It is hard to imagine a more offensive suggestion to a religious Jew in the first century. The lending of money at interest, the idea incidentally that our wealth as a society is now built on but a foundation that is becoming increasingly shaky, was a practice explicitly forbidden in the Old Testament on the grounds that it made the rich richer and the poor poorer. Lending was only to be allowed as an act of kindness or charity, not as a way to make money from someone who by definition doesn't have any. It is strange by the way that those who are so vocal about Old Testament laws when it comes to saying what people can and can't do in their bedrooms are not equally quick to condemn people who have an ISA.

Whatever Jesus might have thought of Occupy we can be sure that Moses knew which tent he was going to be living in. We might imagine him calling down plagues of locusts upon the offices of QuickQuid.com or using his staff to divide Ocean Finance into two. “If you lend money to My people, to the poor among you, you are not to act as a creditor to him; you shall not charge him interest.” (Ex 22:25)

In the parable the slaves failure to invest the money is the one thing he could be proud of – he had stuck to his beliefs and not been tempted by his situation to cave in because of the financial pressure he was under. Burying your treasure was a perfectly good idea at the time – and for much of history. This is why archaeologists keep digging it up. Put it in the ground, its safer. The value of investments may go down as well as up and so on. And in law, the slave was responsible for every penny if any was lost. And he would have had to work the rest of his natural life just to begin to pay it off. It was the other two who took risks. What if they had fared like Nick Leeson or the UBS trader Kweku Adoboli who sat at his terminal and watched $2.3billion of his companies money disappear in digital smoke. I wonder how he would read this parable. Probably through the gaps between his fingers.

So what is Jesus doing, outlining such a litany of greed, exploitation and irreligious behaviour in what seems to be a description of the Kingdom of God?

Personally I think his intention is in many ways similar to those who use parody to shock today. I'm reminded of a recent comment by Jimmy Carr, for which he got into the usual amount of trouble of course. Advertising his DVD he said “I'd like to announce that 20p of the price of every copy sold will do directly to orphaned children in Cambodia. Because they manufactured them.”

We may not be used to thinking of Jesus as a shock comedian but there is something of that in the way he makes his points. Before his followers can change the world, they need to see it as it is. The economics of the parable are what gives it is shock value. The question is how does he want his hearers to respond.

It seems to me that this is a parable about motivation. About what you will do and for whom you will do it. He seems to be saying look, look how hard you will work for those who exploit and abuse you. Look at the lengths you will go to reward those who do not care for you. How much more then will you do for one who loves you. For one who has your best interests at heart? If you will risk your future your livelihood, even your principles for your unjust master who will not reward you, what will you put at risk for the one who will never cast you aside?

On this remembrance Sunday, we might reflect in a similar way. Just look. Look at how much we will sacrifice, how much we will spend on war. Look and see both how it draws out the worst in humanity, and also the best. Look at the heroism you will do in its name, look at the effort and creativity you will put into its machinery. Look at the suffering you will endure and what you will put at risk in the name of victory.

Then ask yourself, what would it be like if we could pursue peace with the same tenacity, if we would employ the same Blitz spirit, self sacrifice and heroism and be willing to risk and to spend as much in the name of peace and justice.

We might also reflect that whatever we think about the Occupy protesters politics, whether we think they are wise or naïve, or quite possibly both, and whatever Jesus might or might not have done about the £14.50 entry charge to St Paul's – the protesters are doing one thing that Jesus did – place in sharp focus the injustices of our time and challenge us to question our motivations and the masters that we serve.