Savannah Guthrie shared her Easter message with Good Shepherd New York parishioners in a digital message posted Sunday on YouTube, in which she asked if Jesus “suffered this very wound that I feel,” in reference to her mother’s disappearance.
Guthrie’s mother, Nancy, disappeared on February 1 from her home in Tucson, Arizona. todayhas since gone off the air, and is scheduled to return on Monday, which will mark the 65th day since Nancy’s disappearance. So far, there are no suspects and no evidence of life.
On Sunday, she appeared in a Good Shepherd New York video, where she asked several questions she said she had been thinking about.
“Good morning everyone. Happy Easter,” Guthrie said. “And Happy Easter. It’s flowers and pastels and little 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 the birth of Christ, even more than his death. His resurrection, his second birth into everlasting life, that’s what matters most to us. His resurrection and his resurrection mean the same thing to us.”
She continued: “Today we celebrate the promise of a new life that never ends in death. But as I stand here today, I must tell you, there are moments when that promise seems irretrievably distant, when life itself seems so much more difficult than death. These moments of profound disappointment toward God, the feeling of complete abandonment for most of us, there will come a time in our lives when these feelings take over. In our tradition, we have learned to take comfort in the fact that our friend Jesus, in his short life, experienced it all.” “The emotion that we humans can feel is that His assumption of the form of humanity made Him not a distant observer of our pain but a practical experiencer of it. Recently, though, in my season of trial, I have wondered, whether Jesus truly experienced this particular wound that I feel, this uniquely painful and brutal wound of not knowing, of uncertainty, of confusion, of withheld answers.”
Guthrie said afterward that she thought that perhaps Jesus had questions for God before he died, just as she had her own questions, and that he could relate to the suffering of others, including her own.
“After Jesus died, after he took his last breath, what did he really know?” she said. On the cross he cried out, “My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?” That is the agonizing cry of someone who does not know the answers. And where did his soul and soul go in those days between them? And what was he thinking? Did he think that the duration of his existence in the grave would be a day or two or a thousand years? Did his torment in the grave seem indefinite to him? This torment of uncertainty, the way infinite pain can feel eternity? Maybe he knew this feeling after all.
Guthrie went on to admit that the message she was conveying was “dark.”
“This is perhaps too bleak a message to share on Easter morning, but I have long believed that we will miss out on the full celebration of the Resurrection if we do not acknowledge the feelings of loss, pain, and, yes, death,” she said. “It is the darkness that makes this morning’s light so wonderful, so beautiful. It is brighter because it is so desperately needed.”
Despite her sadness, she said she feels hopeful and still believes.
“I close my eyes this morning and feel the sunshine,” she said. “I see a bright vision of the day when heaven and earth will pass away because they are one, on earth as they are in heaven. When we celebrate today, this is what we celebrate. And I celebrate too. I still believe. And so I say with all conviction: Happy Easter.”
Watch the video below. Guthrie appears at the 48:40 mark.
