Savannah Guthrie joined Good Shepherd New York’s digital Easter rally Sunday morning to share a message of hope amid her mother’s unsolved kidnapping.
“Good morning everyone. Happy Easter,” Guthrie said. “And Easter is happy. It’s flowers and pastels and baby bunnies. It’s sunshine and joy and hope. It’s rebirth and second chances, new life and new starts. More than the birth of Christ, more than his death, it’s the most important day of the year for all of us who believe. Christ’s resurrection, his second birth to eternal life, that’s what matters most to us. Today, we celebrate the promise of a new life that will never end.” But as I stand here today, I have to tell you that for most of us, there will always be moments of deep disappointment, and times in our lives when these feelings are shaken, when that promise seems irretrievably distant and life itself seems far more difficult than death. ”
Guthrie explained that she was taught that “Jesus, in his short life, experienced every emotion that we humans can feel.” But during her “season of trial,” Guthrie said, “I wondered if Jesus had ever really experienced this particular hurt that I feel, this painful, uniquely cruel wound of not knowing, of uncertainty and confusion, of answers being withheld in our darkest moments.”
The Today anchor then said that after thinking deeply about the story of Jesus’ resurrection, he realized that Jesus may have had his own questions about God before he died.
“But after Jesus died, after he took his last breath, what did Jesus actually know on the cross? Jesus cried out, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'” That’s the cry of anguish of someone who doesn’t know the answer, Guthrie said. “Where did his soul and spirit go during those intervening days? And what was he thinking? Did he think he would be in the grave for a day or two, or a thousand years in the grave? Does his suffering seem endless? That agony of uncertainty, the way infinite pain feels forever. Maybe he knew this feeling after all.”
“Perhaps this is too dark a message to share on Easter morning, but I have long believed that we cannot fully celebrate the Resurrection without acknowledging the feelings of loss, pain, and death,” she later added. “It is precisely because of the darkness that this morning’s light is so wonderful and blindingly beautiful. It is all the more bright because it is so desperately needed.”
Guthrie’s mother, Nancy, was last seen at her Arizona home on January 31st. On February 2, the Pima County Sheriff’s Office said they believed Nancy had been kidnapped. Doorbell camera footage was recovered that showed the suspect attempting to enter Nancy’s home, but little evidence has been found since then.
After a two-month hiatus, Guthrie is scheduled to return to NBC’s “Today” on April 6.
