And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no room at the inn.

-Luke 2:7

Early in this series, I described football as an extension of my church community, the one place where we could explore and practice an embodied theology. The stunning ups and downs of yesterday’s final was a fine metaphor for a spiritual journey (if you’re an Argentina fan), but what I find myself holding onto is a new relationship with salvation. Let’s be clear: Messi is not a messiah and he has not worked out our salvation, but watching his total redemption changed the way I understand my own salvation.

Call me a cynic, but I was not expecting yesterday to see the greatest World Cup final of my lifetime. That’s what we got. As I wrote yesterday, I would not describe the game itself as a “joyful watching experience”–but contrary to my expectations, my joy was made complete at the conclusion, and I have never watched as much of a World Cup awards ceremony as I did yesterday.

It’s right there in Luke 2: Mary gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth. The Western Christian church likes to think of salvation as something that happens exclusively to the soul, leaving the body behind among the broken things of this fallen world. Yet the Advent story makes it clear: salvation is complete, body and soul. Mary’s salvation–our collective salvation–comes through the chaotic, dirty workings of the body. There is no clearer way to include bodies in salvation than for God to incarnate into a body, and yet the Western church continues to argue that salvation is for souls only.

Watching Messi’s stunned face on the field, the sheer number of people he hugged (like a baptism), his physical collapse after Montiel’s game-winning penalty–it reminded me that God’s salvation is for the body and soul. Our salvation is worked out in our bodies, and is an embodied, fleshy experience.

We’re just a few short days from Christmas, and I’ll continue posting these daily reflections through Christmas Eve, as we make sense of what we have witnessed, what it means for us, and what we are called to because of Christ’s great love, which arrives even through the convoluted, corrupt structures of church and football.