Birthday Speech
Good afternoon, everyone. Let me begin by thanking you all for being here, and thank you all the more for enduring my eccentricities. It means a lot to me that you would be willing to take the time to recognize and ponder this rather peculiar threshold of my life with me. For better or for worse, this is the space in which I best know how to love and be loved by people—a cup of tea and a barrel of words. And as we all sit here, together, I do indeed see you all that much the more radiantly, and praise God for the spectacular community of friends and family He has placed me in the midst of.

It of course has not escaped me that this is an unusual way of celebrating one’s birthday, particularly a 21st birthday, which in our culture has come to represent such a significant rite of passage. What my friends and neighbors so graciously and quickly observe about this new era of my life is that I am “legal,” which of course on a superficial level, indicates that I now have, in the eyes of the law, the privilege of imbibing according to my own whims whether that is an occasional glass of wine, or a lifestyle of perpetual celebration.

But on a deeper level, this phrase indicates something much more. As of May 7, 2006, I am 21, and I have somehow transitioned from young adulthood to full adulthood. I find myself the proud owner of several new, annoying little responsibilities. My insurance company asked me to send them my social security number, presumably so that they can bill me instead of my parents. (We’ll see about that one.) The Department of Motor Vehicles informs me that I have twenty days to renew my driver’s license. And I am sure that it is no coincidence that in my college career I am transitioning out of classroom pedantry into a world of larger, more independent projects as I enter into my senior year, and internship with InterVarsity.

This didn’t happen suddenly, of course. It’s not as though at the stroke of midnight beginning the 7th of May a fairy dropped down to wish me luck and wave me magically into adulthood. Maturity, in its each an every sense, is of course something that happens gradually. Though it feels like clowning around some times, yes, I have learned an immense amount from my liberal arts education, both in book knowledge, and in knowledge of how to relate to other people. I can say that the community at Colorado College has helped me mature both intellectually and relationally. And before that, the International Baccalaureate program, and my community of high school friends—some of whom are here today. As ill-defined as I am sometimes, I cannot imagine what I would have been without these spectacular friends to pour their love and care into my growth. Finally, of course, my family is responsible for the core of my substance, which, while ever evolving, is something we all like to think fairly solid, and mostly good.

I have matured in responsibility, and my ability to take it. As my parents and peers can probably testify, there’s still a lot I need to learn here. But nevertheless, through a long and tedious process of living the daily grind and conducting tiny experiments with how I structure my time, I have developed some sense of the world around me, and how I need to be engaged in and responding to it responsibly. I have a more realistic sense of what the dollar is worth, and what an hour is worth, and, above all, what a relationship is worth.

Finally, I have matured spiritually, following Jesus down the path he has ordained, and growing in love for him as the days go by. I find myself with each passing year more receptive to his voice, even when what he says is strange or foreign to my nature. It has been my great pleasure in this journey to walk alongside InterVarsity, the Remnant of Israel synagogue, and the International Anglican Church, and sharing this pursuit of God with these community.

Certainly, I can look at the growth marks my metaphorical doorpost and say with come confidence and pride that I have matured. Maturity comes as a process, of course, not because the march of my days has reached a particular check point. Nevertheless, it is difficult to honor and share these processes without referring to a single point in time, and so, we have sanctified by law and custom the 21st birthday as the time when a young man rids himself of the last restrictions and protections of childhood, and sets his face toward the world.

Now, recognizing the importance of this transition, the passing of this date tends to encourage one form of celebration or another. Some people, and I believe this is a minority, do merely smile and wave it by; I know one person, at least, who spent their 21st birthday in the DMV office. A good many, however, chose to pass the occasion with a copious amount of celebration, unleashing a veritable river of alcohol consumed in any variety of interesting postures and ritual means. Our waitress at Jack Quinn’s the other night, for instance, reported that she didn’t manage to sober up once during the first three months of her 21st year.

I, however, have eschewed both of these options. For whatever reason, I have deemed that it is important to me to drink, not alcohol, but tea in excess, not to do a keg stand, but to stand somewhat awkwardly at this makeshift lectern and bore my friends and gracious guests with a few words that I, in some incredible moment of foolishness, thought worthy of sharing.

And what is it, after all, which causes me to be set apart in this way? There are times when I would have boasted of my foresight, and made some claim to know the best way for a man to live despite the obvious decadence around me. There are other times when I would have alluded to vaguely religious moral scruples, invoking the name of God to justify my distain for drunkards and carousers—interestingly enough, the very people that Jesus came down to earth to hang out with.

But today, I can see and provide only one reason for my strange behavior, and that reason is God. God created me as a specific person with a specific calling, and both what I am and what I am called to, if they are anything, are weird. Everything else I am left to look upon, not in judgment, but in awe. God’s Kingdom, it seems, is big enough for sinner, scholar, comedian, juggler, plumber; all the wild, fragile bits and pieces of humanity we see scattered in front of us every day.

And it is most assuredly Jesus, and Jesus alone, who allows me to be myself. I am not even really clever enough to figure out who I am without the hands of God forming me, his people around me, and his voice whispering in my ear. I have watched our entire generation go crazy over the Disney channel idea of “being yourself” or “discovering who you are” and at the end of it, most people seem to be more confused about who they are than when they started in the first place. Strictly speaking, I am entirely disillusioned with that project; I simply do not have the insight necessary. And if I hardly have the resources to connect with myself, how can I hope to have anything to offer my community, or the world?

And yet, God of his own compassionate accord is already at work in me, in my community, in the world. His breath is upon the waters, his spirit in the wind, moving the trees to clap their hands in praise, and all creation lifts its voice to acknowledge him. As the cross-beams of architecture are hidden in the construction of our buildings, so the Cross is ever present in the world, just beneath what is firstly visible. God is telling his story through this creation, and in telling his story, he is also revealing his new creation.

For reasons that I can hardly comprehend, God invites his people to participate with him in this process of re-creation. He invited the Israelites to be his light to the nations, he asked David to rule over them as king. He stood on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, and said to a few fishermen, “Come, follow me.” History is rife with his calling, and abounds with examples of people who have followed it.

And here I stand, a party to that same invitation. I would rather be no where else, and hearing no other calling on my 21st birthday.

I hear the call to Christ. It is the call to community, a journey with brothers and sisters both present and all across space and time who are thirsting to hasten the coming of the Kingdom of God by their obedient acts of love and healing. It is a relationship of authentic transformation, which, of course, colludes necessarily with world-changing action. And finally, it is a matter of articulation; struggling to put comprehensible words around God’s incomprehensible and inexhaustible deeds. It is something happening that I don’t quite understand, like a seed, growing; a tiny mustard seed which, though the tiniest of seeds, becomes the mightiest of herbs, in whose branches all the birds of air find habitation. It is something unbearably present and unbearably exciting.

It is in this spirit that I wish to make this announcement. I, Nathaniel Ogden Kidd, being of sound mind, willfully, voluntarily, and publicly declare my intention to dedicate myself for the rest of my days to full time ministry.

Now I have the rest of my life to figure out exactly what that means. After all, the ministry God calls us into is nothing more than following Jesus and leading others in following him, and this vocation does not need a special collar or a pontifical hat. I can and do make this my desire whatever I do, whether laying bricks or scrubbing toilets. But what I do mean is this: my time is not my own, to simply be sold and exchanged for material comforts, but is a gift from God to be invested according to his vision and his priority.

And that is where I am as I pass this precious threshold of twenty one years of age. Thank you all for joining with me at this hour, and God bless.