THE body's gone! An ex-devil woman cries. Once, Mary Magdalene was possessed by evil spirits. Now she's to be first witness of God's greatest miracle -- the resurrection.

God often chooses the world's losers as his winners. This hit home afresh the week after a few Easters back when a preacher roared: "I want to belong to a church that throws parties for prostitutes!"

He'd just told of another Mary, a working girl, who cried in a bus station caf. It was her birthday and nobody had remembered.

A church minister, awaiting his last bus, overheard and when Mary left for a night shift on the streets, he asked the caf owner: "Will she be back?

"Sure," he shrugged, "all the girls try for a 2am break."

"What if we threw her a party?" "I could bake a cake," called the owner's wife through the kitchen hatch.

And so, in the early hours, Mary drifted back to a caf decked with coloured trailers, and her hastily-alerted working pals chanted: "Happy birthday to you" and out came the cake with a single fluttering candle.

"Go on," laughed a knife-wielding minister, "cut it, Mary."

"No!" she wailed. In between sobs, she begged to have it as a keep-sake. "No-one's ever done owt like this for me," she sobbed, "please, let me take it home."

God wants a church that throws parties not only for prostitutes, but for the lonely, the lost, the sinners and marginalised -- most of us, in fact.

And why not? Our risen Saviour is planning the mother of all heavenly banquets for all who turn to him.