In public Coach Ray projected the image of a jackbooted member of the Gestapo, a man who could back the front line of the Chicago Bears into a corner. Personally, however, he was gentle and jovial with us, his students. He was a man who was incredibly patient and understanding, one to whom I frequently took my problems with parents and other teachers.

I wondered: How could a person be such a public tyrant and such a private pushover?

In Latin the word person (persona) originally meant "mask." The persona was the clay mask held by an actor over his face during a play. The look of the mask determined what kind of character he was: happy, sad, angry, benign. Thus, the ancient symbol for drama that we know now -- two masks, one smiling, the other frowning -- connect to that original meaning of the word person.

Compare that word, persona, with the original Greek word for "actor." It was hupocrites. You need not be a linguist to see the connection with our English word "hypocrite." In Greek the connotation was positive, because acting was a noble profession.

However, Jesus uses the word in a negative sense in some of his preaching. The latest archaeological discoveries around Nazareth have revealed that the Romans and Herod built a magnificent outdoor theatre near Jesus' home town. So, Jesus almost certainly saw plays when he was growing up; they were performed only a couple of miles from his home.

He knew the word hypocrite and used it to reveal the conflicts all of us experience between the public person we pretend to be and the private person we really are.

In the Parable of the Wheat and Weeds our Lord asks a question that relates to this intermixing of our personalities, the seeming contradictions of our lives, and the hypocrisy with which everyone of us is afflicted. "Do you want us to go and pull up the weeds which an enemy has sown in your wheat?" the servants ask the owner. It is a typical Palestinian problem: the darnel weed, which looks just like wheat in its early stages, is a menace to the harvest. But it also presents a problem: the roots of the darnel intertwine with the roots of the wheat and to pull up one damages the other.

So the householder answers, "No, let them grow together until harvest." The question and answer reach out beyond first century Palestine, and beyond the problem concerning unfaithful members in Matthew's church to whom the evangelist directed it. The questions have to be asked of so many decisions that life forces upon us: What shall we do about evil that unexpectedly appears alongside the good? What shall we do about the contradictions in our own personalities? How does one distinguish between a hypocrite and a genuine person?

The dialectic is between quick zeal and faithful patience. Not an easy distinction to make.

In 1903 there were two cars in the entire state of Ohio and one day they collided! Think about the odds of that happening. Two cars in one of our largest land masses, and they ran into each other. Could the accident have been prevented? Should some pre-emptory law have been enacted? What should have been done? It is impossible

to make laws or devise rules that will cover every eventuality. But we have to do our best, human nature being what it is. We have to expect that something will go wrong; that's the way life is.

One thing we middle-class Christians need to learn about our present dilemma today is precisely here: one does not usually root out evil and corruption which has insinuated itself into the midst of life without destroying much good in the process. "Get rid of government interference in our lives," we cry. But that leaves us with the problem of no legal aid for the poor, of safety and health regulations being ignored to the peril of workers, of increasing pollution.

Consider those who suffered through the June 14, 1982, Hyatt Hotel tragedy in Kansas City, when 140 people were killed and over 200 were seriously injured. For those who lost family and friends because of inept regulations about buildings, it was not a question of government regulation at stake. What they discovered was a theological question they had to ask.

What is at issue here is human nature. Who is the real person and who is behind the mask? Shall we deal with one another on the basis of our normal even-tempered and kindly facades or are we really ill-tempered and nasty? What explains the actions of a man or woman who is thoughtful and courteous with nearly everyone in public but is continually abusive with members of their own families? How can somebody who is a dependable worker and a caring friend be, at the same time, a wife beater? How can someone who loves children and is sensitive to many people be, at the same time, a racist who despises non-whites?

The soil which gives evil its chance is the same soil from which good must be nourished. Parents know the agonizing tension between coercion and control on the one hand, freedom and forbearance on the other. The Parable of the Wheat and Weeds tells us: take care how and when you pull up the weeds.

It also reminds us that one cannot always be sure, especially at an early stage, which are weeds and which is wheat. This is a particularly important lesson for us in these days when all kinds of elitists tell us that they have the one, true answer and they alone know God's will. About abortion, voting, books to read, television programs to watch, and who should be elected to public office.

How often have people attempted to rout out evil with ruthless zeal only to discover later that they have destroyed the good without knowing it. Calvin in Geneva. Ferdinand and Isabella aligning themselves with anti-Semitic forces in fifteenth century Spain. The Communist witch hunts in our own country in the fifties. The list is endless.

How does the Christian find the line of ultimate commitment to Christ while walking between moral indifference on one side and blind bigotry, with its stepchild, cold cruelty, on the other.

We have dozens, hundreds, probably thousands of members on the roll of our churches who can be characterized (to use an old Methodist term) as backsliders. Those who have lost interest in the church and are no longer viable members. It is the same problem Matthew faced and one reason this parable was told in the early church. What do you do about lapsed members? Cut them off? Hope for their return? Evangelize them?

My problem as pastor of The Chicago Temple is to get my people far enough ahead so that they will even have room to slide back.

One major theme runs underneath all the others in this parable: ALL THINGS DO COME TO A HARVEST. The crop is gathered, the good is kept and the bad is burned. Matthew's metaphors of the bundles to be burned and the fish to be thrown away are ways of saying that God is the final Lord of History and therefore Lord of the events of our own individual and collective history.

Equipped with such a faith a person may wait with trust for the harvest, while at the same time guarding against the self-righteousness which says, "I'm going to make it but you aren't." Or the lassitude which says that "since God is in charge, I don't have to do anything."

A biographer of the Duke of Windsor, Alistair Cooke, remarks, "The Duke was at his best when the going was good." Aren't we all? Is that true of your faith? We believe in God when things are going well, but give us a few problems, a disappointment or two, and we begin to doubt.

But the parable is saying to us: God is in charge of the harvest, hang in there, because things will work out in God's way and in God's time. Our faith cannot depend just on the good times and good health.

It just may be that our theology is like that of Woody Allen, who accuses God of being an underachiever. He writes, "I would believe, if only God would give me a clear sign -- like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank."

Jesus says that the signs are not always clear, especially in the beginning. It is finally not for us to determine God's will. It is, however, our task to do the right thing as we know it -- given our limited perceptions. Jesus himself is the Good News: even the agony of the deception, denial and betrayal of some of his best friends, the wondering if God had forsaken him, and the humiliation of the cross did not keep him from saying finally, "Unto thee I commit my life."

David Hardin: This split personality, this mask, why do we have it? Why do we have a persona on the one hand and a real personality on the other?

Eugene Winkler: I think a lot of it is foisted on us by society, by all the pressures we are under these days. I think it is hard for people to be real with one another. It is hard to trust someone with your life; it is hard to find a friend who won't betray you.

I think the most precious commodity people have these days is time. We are under such tremendous stress we don't have time to get to know one another and to trust each other, so we wear these masks to pretend to be something we are not.

Hardin: Don't you feel as little kids that sometimes the real little kid is stomped on, so we decide we have to put something up in its place to protect us because we are not good enough, or we are ashamed, or we are shamed? We cannot expose the real part of us because something is wrong with it.

Winkler: Absolutely. Kids get tromped on. They develop fears in growing up. People make fun of them when they try to be real. A lot of things get blamed on dysfunctional families today. In one sense or another, every family is dysfunctional. There is no such thing, as you were saying about Craig Barnes' book, as a truly whole life; there is no such thing as a truly whole family. We have to recognize those limitations.

Hardin: This past year we have been through a really intense political campaign. It is over now. Do we get to see the real person in these political campaigns, the real politician?

Winkler: Oh, I don't think so. One of my dearest friends was a Washington Post correspondent who covered one of the major political candidates in an earlier campaign. At a lunch one day, someone asked him about this candidate. I think that Walter Cronkite had said that this man was only a shadow of himself. I asked my friend Ward Just and he said that it is worse than that. He is a shadow of a shadow. This man could not possibly be who he was any longer because he had pretended to be for so long something that he wasn't.

Hardin: That can probably happen to us in public life, can't it?

Winkler: It happens to all of us.

Hardin: Yes, and you become fearful because everything you say may be taken or distorted or used in an awkward way. You talked about the shadow of a shadow. Tell me your impression of what our shadow is.

Winkler: I think in the sense that Carl Jung used it, it is that other side of our personality that we don't want people to see. In another sense, it is the persona that we put up so that people won't see the real person I am. We are afraid of that.

Hardin: The shadow is also the place that sometimes contains what we might call our evil side -- the terrible thoughts we all have and the anger we all have at times. I have heard it said that one of the problems with conflicts in the world is that sometimes we can't admit that we have an inner-shadow, so we project it on some other group.

Winkler: Right.

Hardin: We projected it on the Russians as an evil group of people for so many decades. They were in a sense our shadow, weren't they?

Winkler: Right. Think how confusing it has been for people of our generation. We were taught to hate the Japanese, the Germans and the Italians. Then we were taught that they were okay. Then we were supposed to hate the Russians. Now they are okay. Now we are supposed to hate the Iraqis. Who knows when they will be okay? We were taught the Iranians were bad and now we are being taught that the Iranians are okay.

Hardin: The irony is that the closer you get to people the less you can possibly hate them. I remember meeting a group of Russians here and they were such wonderful, lively, exciting people. One of them took me aside (this was before the Cold War ended) and said, "Why is it that you want to kill us all? Why do you want to kill us?"

I had never thought of it that way. I am afraid they would try to kill me -- this projection that we have to find an evil. I sometimes find that is very, very hard. We need to get past that if we were going to make peace with the world. I have got some evil sides and I am going to keep them to myself. I am going to know my shadow.

You have this remarkable church in the Loop. Nobody lives around your church and yet you draw a wide congregation. Who comes to your church?

Winkler: It is probably the most diverse congregation in Chicago, one of the most diverse in North America. We draw members from every zip code in Chicago and from 81 suburbs. We are Asian, African-American, Hispanic, as well as white. It is an exciting place. When people come down for Holy Communion on a Sunday, it is just amazing to see all of these different faces and ages coming down to receive the sacrament.

Hardin: Isn't that sort of a microcosm of where the world has to go?

Winkler: I think so.

Hardin: One of the problems is that we live in these ghettos, whether it is the suburban ghetto full of whites, the inner-city maybe full of Hispanics in one place and blacks in another. In your place, they are learning to live together.

Winkler: They are.

Hardin: I think that is wonderful. Thank you for being with us. It has been a great time.