Bits and bridles

All Saints’, Dorval
Lent IV, Year C
March 30, 2025

Melanie Ferrio-Wise and Vlad (Photo from the Equine Chronicle, 2018)

Do not be like horse or mule, which have no understanding; who must be fitted with bit and bridle, or else they will not stay near you.

As a horse person, this verse has always annoyed me.

I don’t know what the Psalmist’s experience of horses or mules was, but this is not how bits and bridles work.

(Why the theme of my preaching this Lent appears to be “livestock I have known,” I couldn’t tell you …)

First of all, horses and mules have plenty of “understanding”. If they’re acting dumb or stubborn, it’s probably because they’re scared or being worked too hard. If you treat them like a machine, they’ll probably act like a malfunctioning machine, because they’re not machines, they’re living creatures.

But a horse that’s relaxed and knows who their person is, will stay near that person even if they’re not being actively controlled. “Ground-tying”, or teaching a horse to stay put when their reins are dropped when they’re out on the trail, is a basic element of training.

And even horses who temporarily lose their minds and throw their riders will go right back home; they won’t just wander off. They’ll go where their friends are, where they know they’ll be fed and cared for, and where eventually their people will find them, even if they have to walk home covered in mud.

One of my favourite books as a child, one I read over and over again, was The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley. In it, the half-breed daughter of a widowed king, while recovering from an illness, befriends her father’s retired warhorse, put out to pasture due to an injury, and gradually they heal each other. Aerin starts riding Talat on a whim, essentially, jumping onto his back in the pasture without a saddle or bridle, and ultimately when he returns to full strength, they still ride with only a saddle pad, no bridle or stirrups. They have worked together so long and intimately that the use of a bit and bridle are superfluous.

And this is not pure fantasy: there are some horses who are ridden like that in the real world. I’ve watched videos of people in full formal equestrian gear jumping bridleless horses over six-foot obstacles in the show ring. Usually they have a rein looped around the horse’s nose that they can hold onto, but it’s more for something to do with their hands than anything else.

Again, if a horse or mule or donkey needs a “bit and bridle, or else it will not stay near you,” you’re probably either being mean to it, or at least being lazy in your training and use of it.

And even for those who do use the standard equipment, a bit is a means of communication, not primarily of control. A horse that’s relaxed and enjoying itself will be chewing the bit, carrying it lightly in the mouth, and the rider will seek only the subtlest contact required to tell the horse what’s coming next.

What this really boils down to is force. Is your relationship with your animal, who is working for you and dependent on you for survival and comfort, one of friendship, or one of force?

In fact, in the previous verse, the Psalm gets it exactly right: “I will instruct you and teach you in the way that you should go; I will guide you with my eye.”

And from the perspective of the animal – if that’s whom the Psalm is inviting us to compare ourselves to – yes, we shouldn’t be stubborn and contrary. But we also shouldn’t buckle under to authorities that use force and harsh treatment when what we need is teaching and care.

The connections to contemporary events are all too clear. Authoritarianism – the politics of force – is resurgent around the world. Governments seem to think their people must be controlled with bit and bridle, must be forced to comply whether they like it or not.

This might work in the short term, but it never does in the long term. People who are forced to do things will resist and rebel. And even those who comply will do it grudgingly, not freely and willingly. People do “have understanding” and resent being treated as though they don’t. Power based on coercion is always brittle and prone to sudden collapse.

You can see this dynamic at work in today’s gospel, the beloved story of the Prodigal Son – which should really be called the Parable of the Two Sons, because the story of the eldest is just as important as that of the youngest.

The father could have tried to control both of them. He could have told the younger son “no” when he made his brazenly disrespectful request for half of the family property. The father could have sent people to track down the younger son while he was partying in the big city, and dragged him home by force. He could have punished him when he got home, forcing him to do degrading manual labour, as the younger son was expecting.

But instead, he treated him only with love and compassion, and so the younger son came home when he was ready, prepared to think over his bad choices and do better.

As I said a minute ago about a horse who tosses its rider on the trail – “they’ll go where their friends are, where they know they’ll be fed and cared for, and where eventually their people will find them, even if they have to walk home covered in mud.”

Meanwhile, the elder son seems to have felt like he was being coerced – forced to stay near his father by the bit and bridle of his own sense of duty and responsibility. But that was never the case. And when he finally overflows with years of repressed resentment after his brother has come home, the father doesn’t reprimand him, but rather reminds him that he appreciates the older son’s loyalty and that “all that I have is yours”.

Both these sons are free to leave their father if they choose, which is – paradoxically – exactly what ultimately persuades them that what they want most of all is to be near him.

And so it is for us, with God.

God doesn’t force people to do anything. (Sometimes we heartily wish he would!) If we want to stay near God, it’s because that’s where we have found comfort, guidance, compassion, and love. We have worked together as gently and intimately as a horse being taught to be ridden without a bridle. We have been welcomed home as extravagantly as the younger son, despite having comprehensively mucked up our lives. We have been reassured like the older son, that our devotion and love have been noticed and appreciated, even when it didn’t feel like it.

“I will instruct you and teach you in the way that you should go,” says God; “I will guide you with my eye.”

Let this Lent be a time in which we draw closer to God in love, because we want to, not because we “have no understanding” and are being dragged around by a bridle. Whether we have been by the Father’s side all along or have just come to ourselves and come home, let us join the party and be embraced.

Amen.