Savannah Guthrie shares Easter message amid her mother’s disappearance

Savannah Guthrie joined Good Shepherd New York’s digital Easter meeting on Sunday morning to share a message of hope amid her mother’s unsolved kidnapping.

“Good morning everyone. Happy Easter,” Guthrie said. “And Easter is joyful. It’s flowers and pastels and baby bunnies. It’s sunshine and joy and hope. It’s rebirth and second chances and new life and new beginnings. It’s 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 permanent life, that is what is most crucial to us. His resurrection and resurrection mean the same thing to us. We celebrate today the promise of a new life that never ends in death. But as I stand here today, I must tell you that there are times when that promise seems irretrievably distant, when life itself seems much more difficult than death. These moments of deep disappointment in God, the feeling of complete abandonment for most of us, there will come a time in our lives when these feelings will prevail.

Guthrie explained that she had been taught that “In His short life, Jesus experienced every emotion that we humans can feel.” But in her own “season of trial,” Guthrie “has wondered if Jesus really ever experienced this specific wound that I feel, this severe and uniquely cruel wound of not knowing, of uncertainty and confusion and withholding answers in those darkest moments.”

The ‘Today’ host then said that after thinking about the story of Jesus’ resurrection, she came to realize that perhaps he had his own questions for God before his death.

“But after Jesus died, after he breathed his last, what did he know on the cross? He cried out, ‘My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?’ That is the anguished cry of someone who doesn’t know the answers,” Guthrie said. “Where did his soul and his spirit go in those intervening days? And what was he thinking? Did he think his time in the grave would be a day or two, or 1,000 years in the grave? Does his pain seem indefinite to him? That agony of uncertainty, the way indefinite pain can feel eternal. Maybe he knew this feeling after all.”

“Maybe this is too dark a message to share on Easter morning, but I have long believed that we miss out on fully celebrating the resurrection if we don’t acknowledge the feelings of loss, pain and yes, death,” she later added. “It is the darkness that makes this morning’s light so brilliant, so dazzlingly beautiful. It is all the brighter because it is so desperately needed.”

Guthrie’s mother, Nancy, was last seen at her home in Arizona on January 31. On February 2, the Pima County sheriff said he believed Nancy had been kidnapped. While doorbell camera footage was recovered, showing the possible perpetrator trying to enter Nancy’s home, little evidence has been discovered since.

After a two-month absence, Guthrie will return to NBC’s “Today” on April 6.