Being a Christian is now has always been more than mere belief. There is a difference between being a fan of Jesus Christ and His disciple. Written before Christ, our reading from Wisdom is about how inscrutable God's will can be. By contrast, our Gospel is about how Christ takes away this inscrutability by being very clear on what it means to follow Him.
Let's be honest, most of us would prefer a different answer. This is why when confronted with a passage like the one in today's Gospel, we're usually quick to attenuate it, to rachet it down a bit. We want to turn the volume down from eleven to a comfortable 3 or 4.
Following Jesus comes at a cost. Jesus + nothing = Everything. In our Gospel, Jesus tells two stories about the need to count the cost before following Him. The cost of discipleship is great. Jesus is the pearl of great price, the One you shouldn't prefer anything or anyone to. Half-hearted discipleship is no discipleship. The Lord has no accidental disciples.
In what or in whom do you place your hope? In success? In riches? In another person, even if that person is your parent or spouse (we can and do make an idol of the family)? In your dreams about the future?
Death is a given, which is why memento mori remains a worthwhile spiritual practice. Walking each day toward death's horizon should help you discern what really matters, making God's will less inscrutable to you. This is called living sub specie aeternitatis- "under the aspect of eternity." You can renounce your possessions or lose them at death.
It matters whether you see death as a horizon beyond which you presently cannot see or as falling into an annihilating void- the end. This difference is the difference between life and death. It is the difference between life and death because of the conclusions one draws about what matters in life and how one lives in light of what matters.
Jesus' summons to carry your cross is quite literally what it means to follow Him. Let's not forget that we are still in the part of Saint Luke's Gospel where the Lord, having "resolutely" set out, is journeying to Jerusalem (see Luke 9:51). What awaits Him in the Holy City is the cross, a fact that disturbs His disciples both then and now. For several Sundays we have been in a school of intensive discipleship.
The only way to resurrection, to life eternal, is through the cross. The cross is "the narrow door" about which Jesus spoke in our Gospel the Sunday before last (see "Year C Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time"). We are saved through suffering. This kind of brings us back to God's inscrutability.
Far from desiring to be inscrutable, ineffable, etc., God, who knows you better than you know yourself (if most of us are honest, this is no great claim because we don't know ourselves all that well!), wants you to know Him. This is why God reveals Himself. God revealed everything in His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Christ, in turn, shows and teaches us in scrutable ways (as opposed to inscrutable- scrutable meaning "capable of being deciphered or comprehended") the path of life.
In our reading from Philemon Saint Paul addresses his brother regarding Onesimus. Onesimus belonged to Philemon but left to accompany the apostle. It seems Paul, while being aware of Onesimus' irregular status, was happy to have him along, even calling him "my own heart."
In sending Onesimus back to Philemon, Paul points out that because all of them belonged to Christ, they were brothers to one another. This relation in and through Christ trumps all other relations (for Christians water is thicker than blood), in this instance, it certainly trumps the master/slave relationship.
Hence, Paul urges Philemon to receive Onesimus back, not as a slave, but as a brother, as "a man in the Lord," not an inferior. Hence, Philemon should receive this runaway back as he would receive the apostle himself. Through this, Paul calls Philemon to repentance, to metanoia (the Greek word usually translated as "repent"). In the New Testament, metanoia means not just to have a change of mind but to begin having the mind of Christ.
Having the mind of Christ means to understand things in a wholly different and transformed way. For Philemon to see Onesimus as a brother instead of as a slave, even if perhaps a relatively well-treated one, is a huge shift in perspective. Paul calls on him to relinquish his legal right to punish and control Onesimus in the way a master could punish and control a slave. Let's bear in mind the trepidation Onesimus may have felt as a result of Paul sending him back to Philemon.
Onesimus' return confronted Philemon with a choice. Far from an evasion, Christianity is a confrontation with reality, a deep engagement with one's circumstances. An engagement undertaken in the convinction that Jesus is Lord.
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