A January 2008 study conducted by United for a Fair Economy estimated that the sub-prime mortgage crisis we were beginning to experience at that time would ultimately result in a net loss of $164-213 billion in assets for people of color. A friend pointed out to me that this was, in market terms, almost certainly the largest transfer of wealth away from black people in a very long history of economic injustice. By all accounts, the subprime crisis was the result of bad lending policies by banks who wanted to capitalize on a lucrative securities market.

As banks reported huge losses and markets took a dive in the winter of 2008, I was struck by an article titled, “Islamic banks shielded from subprime.” At that point, the author said, conventional global banks like CitiGroup and UBS had already written down more than $80 billion in losses. Islamic banks, however, reported almost no loss at all. Because sharia law (like the Bible) forbids usury, Islamic banks do not charge interest or trade debt. “Many of these conventional products that have been under stress lately are very complex and need special risk management tools,” explained Rasheed al-Maraj, the governor of Bahrain’s central bank. “In Islamic banking you will not have this kind of thing. Some of these products would not be sharia accepted.”

This got me interested in Islamic banking, so I did a little research. It turns out that Muslims have a long history of practicing the tactic of economic friendship that Jesus taught when he said, “use money to make friends for yourselves” (Luke 16:9). When members of the community need money for a large purchase, they typically borrow it from fellow Muslims. But Islamic law’s ban on riba – or interest – has forced the Muslim community to think differently about money lending. If you can’t make money on money, banking isn’t the big business we often imagine it to be in the West. “We are not run-of-the-mill marketing people who find a niche and run with it,” says Yahia Abdul-Rahman, the CEO of Lariba, an Islamic bank based in Pasadena, California. “We are humble servants of the community.”

As a Christian I have to ask: what if churches in this country took the law of Christ as seriously as Muslim banks seem to take their law? Economic friendship is an invitation to begin living God’s economy with the people closest to us. Because it is a tactic, no act of sharing is too small. Any of us can do it, even if all we have to offer is the truth about our debt. A tactical imagination teaches us to be faithful in small things – to know the truth both about our brokenness and about God’s grace in relationship with fellow members of God’s family. Nothing prevents these small acts of faithfulness from growing into bigger partnerships. The key, Jesus seems to say, is that we begin with small things. “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much…” (Luke 16:10).

About twenty-five years ago, the pastor of a relatively poor congregation had an accident and racked up a huge medical bill in the hospital. Without health insurance, he lay in bed praying about how his family would survive the mounting debt. Meanwhile, his church got together, negotiated the bill with the hospital, and pooled money from its members to pay off the bill. The pastor was so overjoyed with relief that he said, “If you can do this for me, we ought to be able to do this for anyone of us who isn’t insured.” So that church started a little health care co-op. They didn’t have a whole lot of money, but they wanted to be faithful to one another and use what they had to make sure no one was crushed by medical bills.

When my family joined this same co-op a few years ago, there were over 25,000 members. Every month we get a newsletter that tells us how millions of dollars are being shared around the country to meet the needs of brothers and sisters who are sick with cancer or having babies or recovering from a car wreck. There’s no way we can befriend all these people, but our common conviction that we should bear one another’s burdens as members of the body of Christ has made economic friendship possible through this health care co-op. Because tens of thousands of people have committed to be faithful in little ways, a real alternative to health insurance is available for a family like mine.

This real alternative was not the result of a grand strategy to reform our nation’s broken health care system. It was the fruit of a tactical imagination that started with a pastor praying in his hospital bed and some regular church folks talking about how they could share their money. Economic friendship like this may be the best witness we have to offer our neighbors in a country where over forty million people are uninsured. Americans have heard a lot of ideas in recent years about how to reform our health care system. In the meantime, though, people are hungry for some good news when their kids get sick or their parents are dying. The wisdom of Jesus’ body is as practical as it is surprising.

Our preferential option for the wisdom of the weak doesn’t excuse us from addressing the systemic injustices that exist in our world today. Anyone who spends time with the poor knows that governmental policy and corporate practices have a huge impact on the daily lives of folks who struggle to make ends meet. We cannot sit back in silence when the poor and weak are crushed by these powers. The argument for Jesus’ subversive tactics isn’t a prohibition against engaging broader societal evils.

But when we engage in the tactic of economic friendship, we are not primarily fighting for the sake of poor people we don’t know. We’re receiving the gift of friendship with poor and rich brothers and sisters in God’s economy. Sharing our money with one another, we join the beloved community that every creature was made to delight in. Perhaps we learn the faith that this economy of abundance requires through thousands of small choices, but that hardly makes it a little thing. To be faithful in the smallest act of economic friendship is to step into the biggest possible economic alternative – God’s never-ending abundance that is offered to all.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is author of God’s Economy: Redefining the Health and Wealth Gospel (Zondervan), available in bookstores this week.