The parables are not just nice stories to teach a moral lesson. The Prodigal Son represents the ten tribed house of Israel, the other son is the house of Judah. Obviously the Father is Yahweh God. They were brought back together under one head, Christ. Ephesians chapter 2 is the answer to this as prophesied in Hosea and elsewhere.
One can not be alienated from or reconciled to something they were never a part. Those far were the ten tribes in Greece and Europe. Those near the two tribes. The middle wall of partition was the animosity between the two houses after the national split.
Ephesians 2:12-16, that you were at that time separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off are made near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who made both one, and broke down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in the flesh the hostility, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man of the two, making peace; and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, having killed the hostility thereby.
and
Hosea 1:11 The children of Judah and the children of Israel will be gathered together, and they will appoint themselves one head, and will go up from the land; for great will be the day of Jezreel.