Biography
Rev. Frederick J. Streets is the first African American and the first Baptist to hold the post of Chaplain at Yale University. Jerry is a native of Chicago and a graduate of Yale Divinity School. For 17 years, he was pastor of Mount Aery Baptist Church in Bridgeport, Connecticut, an urban congregation with 700 active members. Jerry earned a masters degree in clinical social work from Yeshiva University. He has worked as a psychiatric social worker and is currently pursuing his doctorate with a focus on social work and religious values. As a seminary professor, Rev. Streets teaches courses in theology, pastoral care, social ministries and preaching. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

"A Fish Story" 

	As he walked by the Sea of Galilee he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen. And he said to them, "Follow me and I will make you fish for people." Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James, son of Zebedee and his brother John, on the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him. (Matthew 4:18-22)
I read a story recently that fascinated me. Its opening sentence read:
	Scientists say they have discovered a shape-changing fish that can detect the presence of hungry predators and then turn itself from easy pickings into something much more difficult to swallow. (New York Times 1/19/93)

There are many stories about fish and fishing that are not easy to swallow. There is apparently enough conclusive data to give this story about a species of fish that can alter their body shape credibility. Our gospel text for today is a story about fishing and people who fish. It too has an unbelievable tone. Two pairs of brothers, while attending to the tasks of casting and mending their nets, are invited by Jesus -- and the text does not indicate whether they had heard of him or met him before -- to discontinue what they are doing and pursue another life course. We are struck more by their response than we are to the invitation itself: immediately they left their nets, boat and father, respectively, and "followed him." Some writers suggest that such a response was not so uncommon for the time. Young men would not hesitate to discontinue what they were doing in order to be tutored by a rabbi. This could account for Zebedee's lack of concern about why or where they were going. This could also suggest that they had some frame of reference for Jesus before he approached them on the shore.

It is the nature of many "fish stories" to raise more questions than they answer while also sending us to a place that we would not otherwise readily imagine. One of the questions this text stimulates is how do we as human beings change?

Interview with Jerry Streets
Interviewed by Lydia Talbot

Lydia Talbot: Reverend Jerry Streets, Chaplain at Yale University and son of the church who has come home to Chicago. Those aren't my words; they were the words of your minister, the Reverend Wilbur Daniels, when you attended church on the Sunday morning of this taping at the Antioch Baptist Church. What was that like for you going back?

Jerry Streets: It was a tremendous experience. It is always good to be able to go back to one's home church. I went to church to experience the service of my youth, in a sense, and to hear my pastor preach, only to be surprised by being asked to preach myself. It was more than I expected.

Talbot: When you preached at the Antioch Baptist Church, Jerry, here is the place where you grew up. You were married in that church; you buried your mother and your father in that church. How do you claim those roots that are part of who you are when you are on the campus at Yale?

Streets: We are all from somewhere and we need to be true to our histories wherever we are. One of the important things that happened to me growing up on the south side of Chicago and being active in the Antioch Baptist Church was learning what it meant to be a spiritual, moral and ethical person, even as a teenager. That foundation has been there from those early days and I continue to stand on that foundation in my work as University Chaplain.

Talbot: There were some things that you might have said had you been prepared for preaching a sermon at Antioch. There were some things that you said you might have said to the young people there. Here is your chance. What were they?

Streets: I would want to encourage young people to recognize that life is a process, that things can't happen overnight but in the process of discovering who they are and what life is all about, they must make sure that they have some moral, ethical and spiritual bases to life. You learn that through the church, through one's religious community. You learn that in the family. The point is that it is very important to be spiritual as well as social and intellectual beings.

Talbot: How do you reach the students at Yale? We are talking about bright, sophisticated kids these days. In the nineties, what are they thinking about God and religion?

Streets: Students who come to Yale come as whole persons. They come with all the kinds of questions and interests that you can imagine. Because of the fact that I see them coming there as whole people, I remind them that part of their wholeness is the spiritual dimension.

It might surprise our audience to know that religious life at Yale University is a very, very active one. We have over 25 different campus ministers meeting their constituencies' needs and some of those ministries are not Christian. They are Jewish; they are Moslem, Baha'i. There is this rich diversity of religious perspectives. Within the context of that kind of pluralism, students are asking questions about the meaning of religion, the meaning of faith and the meaning of life and spiritual people. Because of that diversity, sometimes they say it seems as if everything is relative.

The Christian says God is one thing; the Jewish person says another; the person who practices the Muslim faith says another, so what do I say? What we do at the University is to help students to sharpen the questions, to understand that a good question is sometimes just as important, if not more important, than the answer itself. We assist them in finding their own spiritual selves.

Talbot: Let me be the student for a second. Why is religion important today?

Streets: It is important because it is a part of life. It is not just religion in the doctrinal sense of learning a particular understanding. It is a matter of learning about who you are as a spiritual person connected with God, as I would call it, or some sense of ultimate meaning or the Creator of all life. We can't move through life thinking of ourselves just as intellectual or social beings or people who are here to use our resources to acquire more resources. We have to deal with the question of meaning, and religion provides guidance in the pursuit of answering that question.

Talbot: As we speak, you are pursuing doctoral work connecting social work, which is your field, and religious values. What is the purpose of religion in social work?

Streets: Interestingly enough, social work's history is founded in the religious charity movement of this country. There was a very close relationship between doing good and keeping the public order with the notion of loving one's neighbor.

What I have discovered as a clinical social worker is that there are a number of clergy-type people who go for the social work education and degree. So I got interested in wanting to understand how clergy persons dealt with the conflict that is presented between religious values and the humanistic values on which current social work is based. My work centers around how clergy people, ordained or lay, are impacted by social work education.

Talbot: Jerry, your list of credentials is miles long. You have numerous outstanding awards, honors and degrees. One of the things that you have published is entitled, "African-American: Reconciling the Two." How do you?

Streets: Well, there has been a long-standing debate, both within the African-American community and outside of it. What does it mean to be a person of African origin and American? There are a number of strong things within our American history that suggests that there were times when we were not perceived as true American, to say the least, about being understood as full human beings. What I try to say in that article is that we are people of African descent, as are people from other countries, but we are also American. That is part of our celebration of who we are. We have to reconcile the two in a way that does not allow us as African-American people to feel split.

It came out of a kind of reflection that I was working on about the W. E. B. Du Bois concept of double consciousness, that we are both black and American, and how we reconcile the two.

Talbot: We just have thirty seconds left, but in your earlier message you said that as you think about your own calling, God must have had a sense of humor. How?

Streets: I think anyone who presents themselves as a spokesperson for God must be humbled by it. I have had a burning desire to be a teacher and pastor and preacher since my teenage years growing up in Antioch. As one gets older, one realizes how human and how frail we are as human beings and for God to speak to me, as I believe God does, about this kind of ministry, is very humbling. That is why I think God must have a sense of humor to choose someone like me.

Talbot: But God has put you on the cutting edge and we are thankful for that.

Streets: Thank you.