Beloved in Christ, 

Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Christ. 

This October I am writing to you in a four-part series called How Then Shall We Live? Each letter calls us into the Chi Rho, ΧΡ, the first two letters of Χριστός (Christos). Early Christians marked their homes with the Chi Rho as a confession that Christ is Lord.  

In each week’s title the Chi, the X, marks the word: Connexion, Politix, Reflexion, Praxis. As we approach an election that strains our national and ecclesial bonds, I want us to ask what happens when we place Christ (X) at the center of how we belong, how we understand power, how we discern and how we act. Last week, with Connexion, we asked how we are belonging to one another. 

This week the Chi lands at the end of a word we dare not skip: Politix. We must consider Christ in our politix because of what we promised at the baptismal font. There we accepted the freedom and power God gives us to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves. There we promise to serve Christ as Lord. 

It is true baptism is personal: God calls each of us by name. Though personal, baptism is never private: we make our vows before the gathered church, and the church makes vows with us. Those were public promises we made for living our faith grounded in personal and social holiness.  

And, public promises need a public place to be kept. This public place is how we do life together. That is what politix (politics) first named: the polis, the city, the shared life of people who must figure out how to live side by side. The Christ we promise to serve as Lord is Lord: in the town, the county, the state and the nation we share. So we lean into politix, not as partisans but as the baptized, and the question of our faith is whether our social and political lean keeps faith with our baptismal vows. 

In Jeremiah, God tells a displaced people to seek the welfare of the city where they have been sent, because their welfare is bound up in its welfare (Jeremiah 29:7). That is politix as God first taught it. John Wesley named the same truth when he wrote that the gospel of Christ knows “no holiness but social holiness.” Wesley meant the holiness begun in us at baptism grows in community, and that love of God which never reaches the neighbor has not finished its work. 

How do we know whether our lean is true? God shows the prophet Amos a plumb line, held against a wall to see whether it stands true (Amos 7:7-8). A plumb line is a weight on a string. It shows what is truly upright, however straight a wall may look to the builder’s eye. It takes no sides. It simply shows where the wall stands, so the builder can set it right. In Amos, God measures the people by the standard they were built by: justice for the poor and honest dealing with the neighbor. 

We United Methodists carry a plumb line from the font, and it has three strands. 

The first strand is our three simple rules: do no harm, do good, stay in love with God. Hold a candidate, a platform or a policy up against them. Who would be harmed by this, and who would be helped? Can I give it my support and still stay in love with God and my neighbor? 

The second strand is the way we Wesleyans think: Scripture first, read in the company of tradition, reason, and experience. We ask what the whole witness of Scripture says, and what the church has learned across its long history. We ask what the facts show. And we ask how a policy will touch “the least of these,” listening closely to those who will live with the outcome. 

The third strand is the Great Commandment: love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:30-31). Last week, with Connexion, we spoke of loving with our hearts. Politix asks us to love with our souls. In Scripture the soul is not a hidden part of us but our whole living self, and a people has a soul as well: the shared character we carry together and pass on to our children. When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, they chose as their motto: “To save the soul of America.” So we ask of those who seek our trust, and of ourselves: does this cause or candidate enlarge our love for God and neighbor, or shrink it? 

Braided together, the three strands ask what Micah asked long ago: what does the Lord require of you? To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8). Justice for the neighbor, kindness in how we pursue it, and humility about our own certainty. A threefold cord is not quickly broken (Ecclesiastes 4:12). 

My undergraduate degree was in religious studies and political science. I have never been able to separate them. As I grew in my understanding of our Wesleyan way, I learned why: personal piety and social holiness are one life, not two. Grace transforms people. Through people, grace transforms nations. 

The Chi Rho reminds us that our calling is not to ask God to stand with us. It is to stand where God stands, and to put first what God puts first. 

So, three practices for this week: 

Do your homework. Read past the soundbite and past the party label. Look at what each candidate has said and done, and read the ballot measures for yourself. 

Hold it to the cord. Take one race or one issue and ask: who is harmed, who is helped, and does this deepen my love for God and my neighbor? 

Show up. Attend one public meeting, and make your plan to vote. 

We are baptized people keeping public promises, measuring our lean by a threefold cord, and looking for Christ in the neighbor who has the least. 

Next week we turn inward with Reflexion, the work of examination and discernment. 

Until then, remember your baptism and be thankful. This is our politix: to seek the welfare of the city, the nation and the neighbor in the name of Christ. 

May your lean be true, 

Bishop Lanette Plambeck
Dakotas-Minnesota Area of The United Methodist Church