There is No Story Without Witnesses

31 January 2026  2 Samuel 12:1-, 10-17

Memorial of St. John Bosco, Priest

“David therefore besought God for the child….” (2 Samuel 12:16)

Where was David’s heartbreak for Uriah?

Uriah the Hittite was one of David’s mighty men, one of a select group of elite warriors called “The Thirty.” His loyalty to David was so strong that when David summoned him to come back from the battlefield, Uriah would not go home. David had thought Uriah would go home, sleep with his wife Bathsheba, and that would cover up the fact that she was already pregnant by David. Uriah, however, refused to go to his home while his comrades were still on the battlefield risking their lives. Instead, he slept on a mat in front of the palace along with David’s other servants. For that act of conspicuous devotion and loyalty, David had Uriah killed, and then married his wife. 

We are the “cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1) whose testimony persuades others to run the good race and fight the good fight. Some of the saints have names. None of the saints have names, however, without the cloud of witnesses to persuade and sustain them.

David wept for his baby, but where was David’s heartbreak for Uriah? For that matter, where was the prophet Nathan’s outrage on behalf of Uriah? He was very worked up about Bathsheba and David’s sin with her, but he didn’t have a word for poor Uriah.

Uriah was pretty much just the furniture in this story, but there would have been no story without him. Uriah was like a great many in the Bible – just the furniture, but there would have been no story without them.

There were shepherds in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. An army of angels appeared to them, shining with the glory of God, and they were the first witnesses of God with Us. It was because of the shepherds, very likely, that the Wise Men figured out where to find Jesus, and Mary pondered the shepherds continually in her  heart, and to this day we do not celebrate Christmas without them… and we don’t know the name of a single one (cf. Luke 2:8-20).

A man possessed by hundreds of demons terrorized an entire community and couldn’t be restrained even with chains, until Jesus cast the demons out. The liberated man begged to accompany Jesus, but Jesus sent him back to his community, east of the Jordan River, to bear witness to them about the Messiah. That region became the most receptive to Christianity in the entire early church, and we have no idea what that first missionary’s name was (cf. Luke 8:26-39).

After the stoning of Stephen (Acts 7:54-8:1) some Christians fled as far as Antioch, and proclaimed Jesus there. Some Greeks heard the gospel, and became believers, too. Eventually they got the idea that it would be good to evangelize more Greeks like them, and they recruited St. Paul (cf. Acts 11:19-30). This small group of Greek believers in Antioch literally changed the world, and we don’t know the names of any of them.

If you read the Bible closely, you will find many hundreds of people whose names get lost in the credits, who appear to be no more than props in the story, and yet there would be no story without them. That is almost all of us. We are the “cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1) whose testimony persuades others to run the good race and fight the good fight. Some of the saints have names. None of the saints have names, however, without the cloud of witnesses to persuade and sustain them.

There is no story without witnesses who believe it, even if nobody knows their names.

Uriah the Hittite, pray for us.