Savannah Guthrie joined Good Shepherd New York’s digital Easter gathering on Sunday morning to share a message of hope amid her mother’s unsolved abduction.
“Good morning, everybody. Happy Easter,” Guthrie said. “And Easter is happy. It is flowers and pastels and baby bunnies. It is sunshine and joy and hope. It is rebirth and second chances and new life and fresh starts. It is the most important day of the year for all of us who believe, even more than Christ’s birth, more than his death. His resurrection, his second birth into a permanent life, that is what is most crucial to us. His revival and resurrection means the same for us. We celebrate today the promise of a new life that never ends in death. But standing here today, I have to tell you, there are moments in which that promise seems irretrievably far away, when life itself seems far harder than death. These moments of deep disappointment with God, the feeling of utter abandonment for most of us, there will come a time in our life when these feelings hold sway.”
Guthrie explained that she was taught that “Jesus, in his short life, experienced every single emotion that we humans can feel.” However, in her own “season of trial,” Guthrie has “questioned whether Jesus really ever experienced this particular wound that I feel, this grievous and uniquely cruel injury of not knowing, of uncertainty and confusion and answers withheld in those darkest moments.”
The “Today” anchor then said that, after pondering the story of Jesus’ resurrection, she came to realize that maybe he had his own questions for God before his death.
“But after Jesus died, after he breathed his last, what did he actually know on the cross? He cried out, ‘My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?’ That is the anguished cry of someone who does not know the answers,” Guthrie said. “Where did his soul and his spirit go in those days in between? And what was he thinking? Did he think his time in the grave would be a day or two, or 1000 years in the grave? Does his agony seem indefinite to him? That torment of uncertainty, the way indefinite pain can feel eternal. Perhaps he did know this feeling after all.”
“Perhaps this is too dark a message to share on Easter morning, but I have long believed that we miss out on fully celebrating resurrection if we do not acknowledge the feelings of loss, pain, and yes, death,” she later added. “It is the darkness that makes this morning’s light so magnificent, so blindingly beautiful. It is all the brighter because it is so desperately needed.”
Guthrie’s mom, Nancy, was last seen at her Arizona home on Jan. 31. On Feb. 2, the Pima County Sheriff said he believed Nancy was abducted. While doorbell camera footage was recovered, showing the possible culprit trying to enter Nancy’s home, there has been little evidence discovered since then.
After two months away, Guthrie is set to make her return to NBC’s “Today” on April 6.
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