But we know where he is from.
When the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from.
What they knew about where he was from in earthly terms was partial at best, missing the most important data about his birth in Bethlehem, the city of David. It is always bad to judge people based on our assumptions about their origins. We typically overlook many concrete details of their existence and only arrive at stereotypes and prejudices rather than anything real. All the more so when the individual in question was both son of God and son of man. For, as much as they misunderstood his earthly origin, even more did they fail to grasp his heavenly origin. Though he already explained that he had been sent by the Father, they clearly didn't understand or accept it, so he challenged them.
You know me and also know where I am from.
They knew if they believed what he told them. Otherwise it could be taken ironically, in the sense of, 'So you think you know where I am from?'. Thus he went on to explain the sense in which they definitely did not know where he was from, and could not, since they did not know the who sent him. Sure, they knew about that One in some sense, and even worshiped him as their God. But they did not understand him on the sames terms that his only begotten Son understood him. Obviously, they weren't privy to the plan in which the Father decided to send the Son and the Son obeyed and allowed himself to be sent. So any understanding they did have was external, did not penetrate into the heart of God, and thus could not account for the origin of Jesus. Their preconceptions about Jesus and their presumptions about God were both insufficient.
Yet I did not come on my own,
but the one who sent me, whom you do not know, is true.
I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.
Here was an opportunity for the confused crowds to look beyond what they thought they knew in order to ask, 'Could it actually be as he said?' But instead of taking it as an invitation they received it as a challenge and became, first defensive, and then aggressive. They might have received the good news of the Gospel but instead heard only blasphemy. They were provoked like the wicked described in the first reading from Wisdom:
Let us see whether his words be true;
let us find out what will happen to him.
For if the just one be the son of God, he will defend him
and deliver him from the hand of his foes.
And so the judgment given in Wisdom applied also to those opponents of Jesus in Jerusalem in today's Gospel:
These were their thoughts, but they erred;
for their wickedness blinded them,
and they knew not the hidden counsels of God;
neither did they count on a recompense of holiness
nor discern the innocent souls' reward.
Importantly, Jesus knew all this, and yet did not suddenly deviate from his plan to die for these very people who tried to arrest him and would one day agitate for his execution. They were his enemies, and yet, as with us all, he desired to offer his life to save them. Because we know this we can be sure that even when we make mistakes or fail to live as good friends of Jesus he does not on that basis turn aside from us either. He continues to pour out his love in the hope that we may eventually receive it and be restored. It is important for us to recognize in Jesus the presence of this God-like agape love that transcends any other love we have ever known. It is precisely in our weaknesses and failings that it becomes possible for us to be convinced of this love at the deepest level of our being. It is then that we will say with Saint John, and in the same spirit of wonder in which he said it, that "we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us" (see First John 4:16).
Newsboys - You Are My King (Amazing Love)
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