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“world” = all the stuff of this present age, worldly riches.
He seems contrasts “world” with “faith” too, in addition to world/kingdom.
How to translate the dative? Poor in the world? Poor of the world? Poor to this world? Poor in the eyes of this world? Perhaps “poor with respect to all the stuff in this world”?
Like you said, here you can’t just talk about “spiritual poverty” given the practical example.

Ok I guess we all sell everything and go live in a cave eating locusts and wearing sackcloth and ashes. Wealth of any sort under any circumstance is cursed and our only hope is to renounce the world and go live in a slum – can we get low enough?
Or is it just possible that the message is much more subtle and much more powerful?

RJS,
No need to go to the extreme. In historical context, the poor were oppressed messianists and the rich were the oppressors. It is not directly about wealth in a different, much differnet, socio-economic context. Though it has implications.

http://reimaginingchurch.wordpress.com
RJS- This passage is still about how you treat the poor, so you don’t have to go sell everything yet. Wait till James 5:1, then go sell everything!
Rereading this and the previous posts, I have a further thought: The way many churches are structured, there are so many essential expenses, they need to reach a certain budget to survive. Will we ever truly get back to the proper lack of favoritism without getting free of the shackles of massive budgets?
James’ example is of blatant favoritism (good seat/floor seat). Are there “invisible” or subtle forms of favoritism of which we are not aware? I think so.

anders,
Actually if I understand Scot – this has nothing at all to do with how the rich treat the poor. It has everything to do with how the poor treat each other and how they treat the rich.
The rich are cursed and out of the picture.
But I’m frustrated because I don’t think that the early church was so uniformly poverty stricken. Jesus appears to have dined with both rich and poor. The early church in Acts included at least some people with education and money (property that they could sell for the good of the community for example). But there is a radical equalization – wealth and power are not signs of God’s favor. We are all equal brothers and sisters in the sight of God and must treat each other as such. We also must care for the needs of others – love out neighbor’s as ourselves.
And by overwhelming emphasis on the oppressed underclass as the audience of James we lose what I think are the most important parts of the book.
So maybe they need to be lost – but you will hear some complaints from me along the way. I can be as cranky as … oh some of the commenters on my posts.

http://reimaginingchurch.wordpress.com
RJS- I actually agree with you. Jesus choosing Zacchaeus and other tax collectors comes to mind. It is sometimes hard to tell which Biblical passages are talking about the $$$ poor, and which are talking about the many other kinds of poverty. Many are “both/and”, I think.

I think that there are so many people who misinterpret the beatitudes. They suggest that Jesus was saying that in order to be blessed you have to be poor or hungry or in mourning. He is actually saying that if you happen to be in any of these states, you are blessed. This is opposite of what we normally think of when we think of these states of being. We do not typically connote being poor with being blessed. We do not consider ourselves blessed when we are in mourning. I think it is a terrible misinterpretation to suggest that in order to be blessed you have to be poor.
However, what about the rich young ruler? Jesus says that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” What is the kingdom of God? A kingdom is an area ruled by a king filled with subjects that serve the king. The kingdom of God is the kingdom that God rules. To be in the kingdom of God, we must submit ourselves to God’s rule. Many people incorrectly interpret Jesus to mean that rich people will not be in heaven, or are cursed.
However, Jesus is wisely saying that rich people will have a more difficult time submitting themselves to the authority of God. When you are rich, you can rely on your wealth to solve your problems. Why would a rich person rely on God to solve their problems when money and wealth is so readily available?