This week’s Old Testament lectionary is Genesis 9:8-17.

This week marks the beginning of Lent, a season of reflection leading up to Holy Week and culminating in Easter. Recalling the 40 days Jesus spent being tempted in the wilderness, Lent functions for Christians as a season of self-denial and self-reflection—a wilderness experience preparing us for the celebration of resurrection and abundant life that takes place on Easter.

Many Christians give up something for Lent as an act of self-denial in preparation for Easter. We tend to focus on things like giving up chocolate or caffeine or Netflix. This Lent, I [propose that instead of these little self-improvement projects, we do our best to fast from injustice. Let’s identify the ways we participate in systems of oppression and begin the hard work of removing ourselves from them. Let’s be resurrection people who bear in our lives and in our bodies the good news of abundant life for all.

This week’s Old Testament lectionary text (Genesis 9:8-17) give us an opportunity to reflect on environmental injustice and to recall that Jesus’s resurrection is good news not only for humankind but for all of creation.

It is common among Christians to think of ourselves as being above or outside of creation, as though God focuses attention only on us. This view has its roots in the creation story of Genesis 1, which includes God’s command for humankind to “fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over…every living thing” (Genesis 1:28). Many Christian interpretations interpret this command as giving humans the right to do whatever we want with the earth and all of its natural resources.

But this week’s text tells of a covenant that God made with Noah following the great flood, which is described in Genesis 6–8. As the floodwaters subside, God speaks with Noah and his sons, making a covenant (berit) with them. Notably, this is the first time in the Hebrew Bible that God establishes a covenant (that is, a contractual agreement). While the term covenant (berit) occurs nearly 300 times, this passage is the first time we see God actually initiating a covenant—binding the divine self in a contractual relationship.

God speaks the covenant to Noah and his sons, saying, “I am establishing my covenant with you and with your descendants after you” (9:9)—that is, with all of humankind. Yet the terms of the covenant don’t end there. God continues saying, “and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you” (9:9–10)—that is, with every living creature on the planet.

Having once put human beings solely in charge of creation (1:26–28) God now makes a commitment directly to the natural world. God’s special relationship with humankind now extends to all of creation. God is contractually obligated to us all.

In case we were to miss the point, the text reiterates the expansiveness of God’s covenant five more times in the space of nine verses. In 9:12, God again acknowledges that the covenant is “between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations.” In 9:13, God describes the covenant as being “between me and the earth.” In 9:14 God again refers to the covenant as being “between me and you and every living creature of all flesh.” In 9:16, God reiterates “the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” Finally, in 9:17, God once again refers to “the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

While human beings are created in the image of God (1:26) and has the special task of exercising “dominion” over the earth (1:26–28), it becomes clear in this story that the creation is likewise an object of God’s care and protection. Any human exercise of dominion must honor God’s commitment to the creation and not again corrupt the earth with violence, as before the flood (6:13).

But what does any of this have to do with Easter? The lectionary makes the connection by comparing the waters of the Noah’s flood to the waters of baptism. The lectionary epistle from 1 Peter references the flood story directly, saying,

God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you…through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 3:20–21)

While this text from 1 Peter makes an important connection between the flood and Easter resurrection through the waters of baptism, it has taken on a decidedly anthropocentric bias. It ignores completely the role of creation in the covenant with Noah. While 1 Peter refers to the “eight persons” who were saved from the flood, it ignores entirely the covenant with “every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark” (Genesis 9:10).

1 Peter imagines that God’s covenant is with humankind alone. But in fact God has made promises to all of creation.

Perhaps a better connection to make between the flood story and Easter would be Romans 8:19–21. In that text, Paul says that

the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God, for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Romans 8:19-21)

According to Paul, the Easter resurrection of Christ saves not only humanity but all of creation, which, like us, will be set free from bondage and decay. In Jesus, God remembers the covenant with all of creation made at the end of the flood story, bringing redemption to the natural world as well as to humankind.

If we are truly to be an Easter people—if we are truly to point toward the new life that is possible in a post-Easter world—then we Christians must become environmentalists. For our salvation to be meaningful, it must extend to all the world—from the birds of the air to the creatures of the sea, from the mightiest oak to the tiniest microbe—for that is the scope of God’s salvation.